


(we will be) as if chosen

by alivingfire



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hate to Love, M/M, Minor Character Death, Modern Royalty, don't worry you don't know the guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 05:30:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12404187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alivingfire/pseuds/alivingfire
Summary: There's not a royal in the world who doesn't carry some sort of secret, and Prince Louis has more than his fair share. To protect himself and his family, Louis withdrew from the public eye and tried to live a quiet life, biding his time until his sister Lottie could take the throne in his stead. Unfortunately for him, the national media and the worst person Louis has ever met team up to bring him kicking and screaming back into the spotlight.Under the watchful eyes of millions, Louis has to figure out how to keep his carefully constructed house of cards from falling, and the first step to accomplishing that is to keep from falling in love with the irritatingly charming Prince Harry, who just won't stop showing up and trying to whisk Louis out of the constraints of his boring life.Or: the course of true love never did run smooth, because sometimes people are stubborn and sometimes people are scared and sometimes, just sometimes, love can cause just as many problems as it solves.





	(we will be) as if chosen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Harrehleh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harrehleh/gifts).



> this work is based on some beautiful art by [laura (harrehleh)](http://harrehleh.tumblr.com/), which is posted and linked in the story. laura asked for long haired harry and a little bit of angst, so I did my best! a major, major shoutout to the RB mods as well, who made this entire process beyond simple and set up a really amazing exchange. 
> 
> just a few notes before we get started (because who am i without my author notes, i ask you):  
> \- there is a character outed in this fic, though it's only briefly mentioned and not really described in detail. if you want to skip that section in particular, you can start from "But it was too late" in the louis flashback section and start reading again at "In the midst of Louis' life twisting into a new shape."  
> \- i don't actually know if it's possible for a non-noble to marry into the royal family and then actually become the reigning monarch. i also don't know if a royal in line for the throne can decline the throne. royalty is baffling, and everything is a mess. so, take the actual lines of ascension in this fic with a grain of salt.  
> \- i got all the way to the end of this fic before i realized i never mentioned, uh... where harry is from. so, harry is the prince of genovia. his mum is anne hathaway. mary poppins is his grandma, everything is real and nothing is made up here.  
> \- title is from [Prince of Fire/Prince](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=49824%22) by jane mead:
> 
>   
> _I will encircle you_  
>  as I encircle you now  
> when my brow and my hands  
> are ash. We will be  
> as if chosen. Even the air  
> will have to pretend.  
> 

**@DailyMailUK —- 8 minutes ago  
Here comes the son! Royal family step out in style for Princess Felicite’s birthday. See the sweet birthday message from Prince Louis and other pics here - > http://dailymail.co.uk/here-comes-th… **

**@kimmyandthejets — 5 minutes ago  
@DailyMailUK no one cares about louis, just show us what lottie wore **

**@l-l-l-l-lola — 3 minutes ago  
@kimmyandthejets @DailyMailUK honestly, louis could parade naked in the street and i’d still think he’s the most boring royal in the world **

**@kimmyandthejets — 3 minutes ago  
@l-l-l-l-lola pics would be nice, tho #justsayin **

**@l-l-l-l-lola — 2 minutes ago  
@kimmyandthejets if you’re into that sort of thing **

* * *

 It’s a normal night in the palace when a knock on the door startles Louis upright.

He’s not quite asleep, not quite awake, and when he stands he gets a head rush for a moment. “Coming,” he calls quietly, though he knows anyone deigning to knock on his door at — he checks his watch — ten-thirty at night…

Wait. It’s only ten-thirty?

Louis scrubs the sleep off his face and tries not to look so much like he has the bedtime routine of a ninety year old before he opens the door.

He doesn’t know who he expected, but it definitely wasn’t Lottie.

And it _definitely_ wasn’t Lottie in tears, mascara hastily wiped but still smudged under her eyes, one false eyelash hanging on by the slightest bit of glue.

“Lots, what-” he says, but doesn’t finish the rest of his sentence before his sister is in his arms, his shoulder wet with her tears.

“I messed up,” Lottie says. Remarkably, her voice is steady. “Lou, God, I messed up.”

“Okay,” Louis says, wrapping his arms around her tiny frame and keeping her close. Conversations are always better when you can’t see the other person’s face, anyway. “It’s okay. What can I do?”

Lottie pulls back, but only enough so he can hear the first time her words break. “I need-” she says, stops, takes a breath. Pulls all the way back so he can see her tear-streaked face, so she can see his in return. “I need your help.”

* * *

 _Transcript from_ This Morning, _air date April 13, 2017:_

_Phillip Schofield: … news from the royal family this week: coming this fall, we can expect a new children’s book written by Princess Phoebe and Princess Daisy themselves, and the family will be donating free copies to every school in the kingdom._

_Holly Willoughby: What a lovely gesture.  [Turns to face camera.] The story is about two princesses who save their kingdom from an evil dragon, and it will include illustrations from the princesses’ favorite illustrator._

_PS: Princess Charlotte, of course, released her own book on makeup, fashion, and quote-unquote “beauty lifestyle” this past winter.  [Shuffles papers.] Perhaps she can give her sisters some tips on reaching the bestseller list._

_HW: Or maybe they can convince Félicité to write something as well!_

_PS: Oh, that would be fantastic.  Then we’d have a book for every royal._

_HW: Well, except-_

_PS: [Coughs, shuffles papers again.]_

_HW: Moving on to sport, Manchester United is at home this evening…_

* * *

“Liam,” Louis says. “I need to throw an event. Actually, several. I need to throw several events.”

“Yes, well, hello to you too on my one day off this month,” Liam says, sounding mildly annoyed in that way that means he’s actually very annoyed but is too well behaved to show it. Louis can hear the subtle sounds of an expensive spa in the background; shame, Liam really could’ve used a whole day of pampering, and only got about twenty minutes instead.  “And I must have misheard you when you started rambling before the conversation even began. Could you try that from the top?”

“No mishearing here, my friend,” Louis says. He grins, ignoring the rabbiting of his heart. “Let’s dust off my dancing shoes. It’s time for my retirement to end.”

* * *

“Right,” Liam says. It’s four hours later — Liam refused to skip his massage for a non-life-threatening emergency — and they’re in one of the overstated meeting rooms in the palace that still has the lingering scent of cigar smoke and oppression from centuries past. Liam slams down three large notebooks onto the gleaming wood table in front of him, then gently lays his iPad on top of the haphazard pile. He crosses his arms and stares at Louis for a long minute. Then: “Did you hit your head?”

“What?” Louis asks. “No.”

“Catch the flu? Remember that winter you had rubella —”

“It wasn’t rubella, there are vaccines for that and I definitely received all possible vaccines.”

“— and you were so woozy you thought the ceiling was raining but it was just the shower? Because I remember.” 

“No, I don’t have the flu. Or rubella. I _know_ you know I was high, Liam.”

Liam is undeterred. “Did you lose a bet? You have to tell me if you're going to do something stupid just because of a bet.”

“No, I didn't lose a bet,” Louis says, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “Jesus, can we just… please? I'd like to throw some events for some good causes, despite that going against everything I've tried to do to keep myself out of the tabloids for ten years now. I get it, it's backwards and wrong but it's what I want to do so,” he shoos his hands at Liam. “This is what I pay you for, so that my whims can be fulfilled.”

Liam grumbles and arranges his binder pile into a perfect square. “Technically, the taxpayers pay me,” he says. He looks up at Louis through his eyelashes, his don't-shoot-me-I’m-just-little-ol’-Bambi look. “Why are you doing this, man?”

Louis wants to say _my baby sister needs me_ and he wants to say _I’m tired of being afraid of my own actions_ and he wants to say _just once, I'd like to not have a backache from looking over my own shoulder for things going wrong_ but he doesn't say any of that. Instead, he taps a quick, steady rhythm on the table and says, “It’s just time, Payno.”

Another long look, as though Louis wrote the real reason on the inside of his skull and if Liam just puts in enough effort, he’ll be able to see it. “Fine,” he says finally. “Fine. Be mysterious, I’ll get it out of you eventually.” He presses his fingers against the edges of the notebooks again but doesn’t move them because they’re already perfectly straight. “So, charity events. What charities are we benefitting?”

“Oh, uh,” Louis shrugs. “Dunno.”

Liam, who had been typing on his iPad, stops for a minute, nods once, and says, “Right. Okay, what were you thinking the events could be? Dinners, auctions, dances, what?”

“Hmm. Dunno that, either.”

“Dates? A general time frame in which you would like these vague charity events to materialize?”

“Dunno.”

Liam clicks the button to put his iPad to sleep and sets it gently down once more. “Right. Is there anything you _do_ know?”

Louis considers that for a moment, then snaps his fingers. “Ooh, yes.” Liam unlocks his iPad again, his fingers poised to type. “You know those fancy invitations on the really nice paper? I think we should use those.” Liam locks his iPad once more and starts rubbing earnestly at his forehead. “What is that, cardstock? That. And, oh, I saw one once that had little strings of pearls, really classed the whole thing up. Can we do that?”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm, Lou, I really do,” Liam says. “But perhaps it would be more productive to focus on the big stuff, just for now.”

“Sure, Payno, you’re the boss.”

“That has never once been the case,” Liam says absently, throwing open one of the binders and flipping through the pages. “Here’s a list of charities we’ve supported before with no ties to anything sketchy.” Flips another page. “Here’s a list of approved venues, which will help us narrow down the contents of the event.” Another page. “Caterers and serving staff companies.” Another. “And, here’s the approved guest list for any royal event, and others can be added on a case-by-case basis.” Louis pulls the binder towards him and starts reading, making a face when he sees the top name, and making a worse face when he sees the second name. He takes Liam’s pencil and draws a tiny knob next to Niall’s full title, then takes a picture and quickly texts it to Niall.

He’s reading Niall’s reply of _im not a knb ur a nob lad dont make me come over ther_ when he catches the last half of what sounds like an important sentence. “... issue with, well, your image.”

“What?” Louis asks after texting Niall a row of upside down smiley faces. (He doesn’t really understand that particular emoji man but he knows he’s using it incorrectly and that bothers the hell out of Niall.) “Sorry, start over.”

“I said, it doesn’t really matter what the events are if we don’t deal with your image issue.”

“My image,” Louis repeats. “My _image_ is the reason I can’t throw a charity event.”

“Louis, come on,” Liam says. “Put everything else aside. You’re not a prince, I’m not the highest-paid assistant in the country. Just Louis and Liam.”

“Fine,” Louis says, slumping backwards. “Yes, I know. My image is an issue.”

Actually, his _image_ isn’t an issue, because he doesn’t _have_ an image. That’s the whole point. He’s avoided cameras like they’re contaminated with the plague since he was seventeen years old. Royalty automatically demands some small level of public interaction, but Louis has a system, with charts and everything. The charts are laminated. It’s foolproof.

“If you suddenly start appearing in public doing good things for people, people are going to assume the worst,” Liam says. “Reporters will start digging for skeletons in your closet. Are you ready for that?”

 _No._ “Do I have a choice?” Louis asks. “Honestly. If this is something I want to do, is there a way to do it where I don’t end up looking like a serial murderer overcompensating by taking pictures kissing babies?”

“Yes,” Liam says, and Louis perks up, because he'd honestly expected a no. “It’ll be a stretch, but it can be done.” He looks up at Louis through his eyelashes again, but it doesn’t feel coy. It feels like Liam is trying to build him up, to prepare him. “It’ll mean changing almost everything you do now.”

And _that’s_ the real issue.

Like all things — the delicate split-screen balance of his TV, his fringe, his general relationship with the outside world — Louis maintains his public image with single-minded tenacity and the kind of deep-seated awareness that can only be found in people who were born famous or became that way at an early age. It's like being strapped down to the slide of the world’s largest microscope, all-seeing eyes overhead like some kind of sword of Damocles, waiting to slice him in half at the first hint of a wrong move. Louis knows, understands, and has a healthy respect for the press, and as such, he’s learned how to be exactly who they _don’t_ want him to be.

Namely, he’s really, _really_ boring.

He wears designer clothing that proves the royals haven’t blown through the country’s money and are now destitute, but not outlandish enough to garner any attention. He doesn’t date. Ever. Any and all attempts to link him with the new favorite starlet or political whiz kid of the day are quickly silenced. He shops for groceries once a week and is never seen buying anything unhealthy, addictive, or produced by a nation with which England has diplomatic issues. He doesn’t have pub nights with mates or go jogging in the park or even hang out with his sisters in public unless it’s an official function, just in case they’re spotted and they draw unwanted attention.

It’s not the most fun, and he has to be diligent about _everything_ — he smokes in an inner palace courtyard that only certain people have access to, he hides liquor bottles in nooks and crannies and sneaks them into the garbage when he's finished, he has very few hookups with the same couple of people and they've all signed NDAs — but it's necessary. He has excuses for his excuses, backup plans for his backup plans. Alibis, proof. No paper trail of anything. Any wrong move, any misstep or wrong word, and he can have seven different contingency plans ready to deploy to cover his own ass as well as anyone else who might be affected.

Being a royal means having the weight of a nation on his shoulders and having to pretend that the weight is never a burden. Louis is, consistently and constantly, one step away from throwing the government into turmoil. It's only through extensive planning and preparation that he can make that one deadly step less likely. He won't be the reason his family is shamed in the press.

He won't let _any_ of them be the reason. Not now, not ever.

Which is why he has to do this.

“I understand,” he says. “What do we have to do?”

“Well,” Liam says heavily. He flips open a heretofore unopened notebook and turns to a bright red tab. “First, we gotta invent a tragedy.”

* * *

 

A week later, Liam knocks on Louis’ door, thrusts a medium-sized pet carrier into Louis’ arms, and says, “This is Reginald. He’s allergic to grass and you rescued him from a shelter after he was hit by a car. He’s what the shelter lady called ‘passionate’ but what most normal people would call ‘grouchy and unstable’ and has to take pills twice a day for his bad leg. He does not like his pills, but you _will_ give them to him anyway because if Reginald dies, so does your chance at a successful image rebrand.”

Louis peers into the carrier and sees only anger in the form of yellow eyes. They acknowledge each other, him and Reginald, who seems to be some kind of small lion dyed grey to look like an overly large house cat.

 _Well, I always wanted a pet,_ is the unfortunate sentence Louis thinks right before the cat is leaping towards the (thin) bars keeping him locked in his cage, clawing at Louis’ face like it's his dying wish to leave a scar and spitting wildly. Louis yelps and, unable to jump away from the carrier he’s holding, thrusts his arm straight out to keep Reginald as far away from his body as possible. The carrier swings with the momentum, Reginald yowling irritably as he tries to maintain his balance.

Liam, who is still smiling like this all is delightful, says, “Capisce?”

“I-” Louis says. He makes accidental eye contact with Reginald once more, which sets him off on his hissing again. “Why _this_ cat? Why couldn’t I have decided to rescue a friendly golden retriever who has never bitten anybody? Or a hamster, I could rescue a hamster! A goldfish!”

“Too late, the press release has been sent,” Liam says. And then he grins. “And it’s this cat because sometimes, you make my life difficult, and I take my revenge in the small ways I can..”

“This isn't like your house plants, Liam,” Louis says, bordering on desperate. “This thing is _alive!_ I have to feed it!”

As if to dispute that, Reginald yaks up something that makes a wet plopping sound when it hits the bottom of the carrier.

“That reminds me, I’ve instructed the cleaning staff to let you handle Reginald’s messes,” Liam says, smiling brightly. “There’s a litter box that will be delivered soon. And some… supplies.”

“Why?” Louis asks weakly. Reginald lets out his own miserable howl in solidarity, as if saying, _why are you leaving me with_ this _guy?_

“To convince the world you’re actually a cat owner, you have to _be_ a cat owner,” Liam calls back over his shoulder as he walks away. “Have fun!”

The litter box, when it arrives, comes with a gilded poop scooper engraved with Louis’ full title. Reginald sniffs around the box for a few minutes, shits directly beside it on the plush carpet, and sprints under the bed where he proceeds to scream-meow for an hour.

 _You owe me so much,_ Louis texts Lottie later. All he gets in reply is the crying with laughter cat emoji.

* * *

 

**@TheSunUK — 5 minutes ago  
PUSSY GALORE: See pics of Prince Louis’ new rescue cat here: thesun.uk/4658-louis-cat-drama **

**@SummerBreeez — 3 minutes ago  
@TheSunUK okay listen i do NOT care about the royals bc like modernity and whatever but that cat is like real life crookshanks and i’m here for it **

**@allisonmyaimistrue — 2 minutes ago  
@SummerBreeez yeah FUCK THE MONARCHY but that cat??? is my new hero **

* * *

The first of the charity events unfolds on a warm evening in late summer, when it's just humid enough to be annoying but still chilly when the sun goes down. The whole thing is, as predicted, going off without a hitch, so completely choreographed and planned that Louis panics a little when he realizes he has to pee and it's still forty minutes before his scheduled bathroom break.

Liam has already set up seven events over the next few months, the first few — including this one — supporting the London shelter where Reginald spawned after he clawed his way out of hell, as well as a few more further-reaching animal charities.

“You literally cannot go wrong with puppies and kittens,” Liam had said. “We’ll go pick out a few of the cutest ones at the shelter and have an area set up where people can pet them. It’s brilliant.”

Reginald was going to be the guest of honor, but then he chewed through three of Liam’s Italian loafers (only the left ones, so he had to buy four pairs in total) and puked on his laptop, so Liam decided that could wait until Reginald’s people skills were more polished.

Tonight’s benefit is a dinner, with the rich and royal paying thousands to eat nice food and wear nice clothes, all in the name of the adorable baby animals on the high-resolution posters tastefully strewn about the room. The focal piece is a posed-to-seem-candid shot of Louis and Reginald playing with a bit of yarn, a moment that was captured seconds before Reginald went for Louis’ forearms instead.

It's a good thing Louis has been forbidden from hooking up with anyone at any of these charity events, because explaining the bloody gauze and teeth marks under his pristine suit would be difficult.

Anyway, the night is hitch-less and no one seems to be insinuating that Louis is only doing all of this because he's trying to hide the fact he's a serial murderer, so it's a win in Louis’ book and they haven't even gotten to the actual meal yet. He nods politely to an Emir from the House of Saud he only vaguely knows, and then again to a Swedish princess who’d made Liam change the time of the event three times to fit her schedule, then announced she was free for the original time after all.

“Royalty,” Liam had grumbled, swiping his finger so quickly across his iPad screen that it squeaked. “You lot think you’re so important and you can’t possibly come to an event that’s only a month away, then it turns out you don’t actually have that much going on in the first place. The _worst.”_

“You’re absolutely right,” Louis had agreed peaceably, because he got used to being the target of Liam’s royalty-are-the-worst diatribes a long time ago. But it’s okay, because Liam lets Louis rant about the state of England football and how the Starbucks near the palace started serving pumpkin spice lattes in _May_ this year, _what the fuck,_ so they’re totally even.

While the evening is, still, hitch-less, there are parts of it that Louis wishes he could avoid. The click of cameras as he'd walked the red carpet is still echoing in his ears and giving him a headache, simultaneously reminding him exactly why he avoided all this shit in the first place and making him wish he could avoid it all in the future, too.

And then he was inside a hall crammed with people whose company he'd dodged for years, though at least none of them are paparazzi. (Louis _does_ spot the unpleasant face of one of his least favorite reporters lurking at the back of the room, beady eyes taking in the scene and watching Louis with the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for use by his mother when he's late for a state dinner.) It's warm enough in the hall that Louis sees several women flapping old-fashioned fans, and while no one is quite in formal wear, Louis _knows_ there isn't a single person here who is actually comfortable.

Somewhere in a detached part of Louis’ mind, he wonders why anyone would bother with any of this. _He's_ doing it because it's necessary, because he told Lottie he would help her and this is how he can do that. Everyone else, though? Louis has no idea why they're here.

 _Louis,_ chides Liam’s voice in the back of Louis’ head. _They came to be_ seen.

As though to confirm the voice in Louis’ head, the real Liam bustles up and straightens Louis’ tie, fussing at his lapels. “Time to quit hiding,” he says. “You chose this, remember?” He steers Louis out of his isolated corner of the room to stand in front of the head table, which is perched up on a small dais so everyone can see the most important people here.

“Announcing the Crown Prince Louis,” rumbles an unseen voice through the speakers tastefully hidden around the room, and every head snaps toward Louis.

No, Louis corrects the Liam voice in his own mind. Because it is, for once, wrong. These people aren’t just here to be seen; they’re here to be seen _with Louis._

Liam was right about something else, though: royalty are the _worst._

“Louis, darling,” says a baroness who approaches with far too much familiarity, especially since Louis is not entirely sure he knows her name in return. Strong hands grip Louis’ arm, acrylic nails blunt against his jacket. “It’s _so_ good to see you out in the world.”

“Yes, yes,” agrees a duchess with fake eyelashes so long they’re weighing her eyelids down, making her look half-stoned. “It’s not good for a prince to be… _cooped up_ so often.”

“A security hazard, we understand,” says a red-faced viscount, wringing Louis’ hand. “Still, it’s nice to see you out among your own people, Sir.”

“Give those idiots at the _Sun_ something else to talk about, eh?” murmurs a marquess old enough to be Louis’ great-grandmother, before slyly pinching his bum.

“Good turnout,” Liam says cheerfully as he peels Louis away from a cousin of his who lost the nobility lottery, sixth son of an incredibly minor lord somewhere in Wales, a poor sod who will have to marry upwards if he wants any kind of recognition. Liam steers Louis around the edge of the head table, next to a giant tray of glittering champagne classes. No one will eat until Louis does, seeing as he’s the guy in the room with the most titles after his name, so Liam gets him settled into the centermost chair of the table and leaves to whisper in the ear of the lead server for the evening.

“If everyone could begin taking their seats, the dinner will commence,” says the same invisible announcer. There’s a small rumble as chairs are pulled out across the room, ladies sitting first, followed by the men.

“Eyo, mate,” says a voice next to Louis’ elbow, and his stomach flips in relief when he looks up to see Niall there, cheeks red from the heat of the room and green sash over his jacket slightly askew.

“Nialler, thank fuck,” Louis mutters as Niall takes his seat, his elbow knocking the salad fork into the dinner fork. Louis lowers his voice to say, “I thought for sure they’d seat me next to-”

“Evening, gentlemen,” says another voice, and Louis hates himself for even bringing up the possibility, because here it is unfolding in front of him.  

“Harold,” Louis says stiffly, leaning slightly away as a black-suited server pulls out Harry’s seat directly to Louis’ left. He should’ve known, because Liam was far too cagey about the guest list for this not to happen.

It's all red in the corner of Louis’ eye for a moment as Harry takes a seat. He's in military dress — not the full formal uniform, not for something like this — and it's distractingly crimson, shiny gold medals glittering on his chest, his sash piercingly white. _Like a fucking peacock,_ Louis thinks to himself, and the anger only grows as he catches a glimpse of Gucci loafers at the bottom of Harry's immaculately pressed uniform trousers. _Gucci loafers._ With little rainbows on them, even.  

And it’s not like Louis can even cast stones. He’d had to have Liam give him a stern reminder that at this event, all eyes would be on him, and so he couldn’t get away with wearing his adidas tonight. _Louis_ wasn’t able to get away with anything, but Harry threw the royalty rulebook out so long ago that his unusual footwear might even go unnoticed.

Harry adjusts his jacket as he sits and then, as if he knows exactly where Louis is looking, he bends and runs a finger along the edge of his loafers. Not even doing anything, just drawing attention to them.

Louis pulls out his phone and — discreetly, of course — sends a text to Liam. _I hate you so much,_ he types, not having to look at the screen. He watches Liam from across the room as he pulls his phone from his pocket, checks his message, and turns to give Louis a cheerful thumbs up.

“Wanker,” Louis mutters.

Niall snorts next to him, barely audible over the sound of a hundred different nobles all settling in for a fine dinner. On his other side, another one of Louis’ cousins — this one luckier than the last one he’d spoken to, a duke with a decent parcel of land of his own in the southeast — hears and gives Niall a startled look, which after a moment morphs into a lazy, interested smile. Niall smiles back, and Louis feels the strong urge to let his head thump against the table, no matter how undignified it might be.

“Oh, come now,” chides Prince Harry. “It can’t be that bad to be stuck next to me.”

“There are worse people,” Louis agrees, staring straight ahead. He doesn’t need to look to see the sly, self-satisfied smile curl Harry’s mouth, that ridiculous twinkle in his eye that says he’s got you where he wants you. “Hitler, maybe. The guy who shot John Lennon. Ted Bundy.”

“Nice to know I’m not as bad as Ted Bundy,” says Harry agreeably.

They both go silent as the servers lay out the first course, something with lobster, Louis hadn’t been paying that much attention. He plasters a careful smile across his face, not wanting anyone to get a shot of him frowning down at his food and using that to spin a whole story about him ruining the entire evening or something.

The reporter in the back is still watching Louis, his phone out on the table as though he’s ready to tweet at a moment’s notice. Louis’ hand tightens around his fork and he digs in. Next to him, Prince Harry quietly does the same.

“This was a nice idea,” Harry says after a few quiet minutes. He’s laid his fork diagonally across his plate, signalling he’s ready for the next course; hands folded in his lap, he’s like a picture straight out of the etiquette book Louis had to memorize by age eight.

“Liam put the whole thing together, it’s just my name on the invitations,” Louis answers. He’d shrug, but that’s ungentlemanly, or so he’s told.

“Even so,” Harry says. “Charity is still charity, even for the wrong reasons.”

“Wrong reasons,” Louis echoes. For the first time since he sat down, he turns to look at Harry. “What wrong reasons did I have for this event, do you think?”

Harry raises a mild eyebrow in return. “Oh, was it meant to be a secret? It seemed clear to me. You wanted back in the spotlight, so you created a reason to be seen.” He leans gracefully to one side, pushing a handful of curls out of his face, and nods subtly at the poster of Louis and Reginald. “There’s nothing wrong with playing the PR game, Louis.”

“I’m not-” Louis stops, breathing out slowly through his nose. “That’s not the focus of this evening.”

“Of course it is,” Harry says, brooking no doubt. “You can do two things at once. Tonight, you’re raising money for a good cause and saving face. Perfectly fine.”

“Whoa, mate, easy on the silver,” Niall says amiably, if carefully, breaking Louis’ concentrated glare right at the stupid freckle on Harry’s lip. Fingers tap at the back of Louis’ hand and he drops his fork, the clang of silver against wood dulled by a thick tablecloth and loud conversation around them.

“I apologize if I touched a nerve,” says Harry lightly. “How is your new cat, Reginald, is it?”

“He's great,” Louis says, then eats the next course in silence.

* * *

**@WriterRobWringer — 4 minutes ago  
Tension between nations? At @PrinceLouis’ charity event, LT and Prince Harry glaring daggers. Check my report tmrw for details! @TheSunCeleb **

* * *

Later that evening, Louis gets a text from Liam.

_Ready to tell me why we’re doing this yet?_

Louis sets his (fourth) champagne down and goes to seek out Liam amongst the glittering crowd. When he finds Liam, he ignores the group of socialites he's charming, and walks up and says, simply, “No.”

Liam, also ignoring the socialites for a teensy, slightly-rude second, says, “You’re going to break at some point.”

Louis pulls out his phone and texts him _fuck you,_ then walks away to hunt down the server holding the tray of canapés.

* * *

 

_PRINCE LOUIS GIVES BACK: A CHANGE OF PACE FOR THE NATION’S HEIR_

LONDON, UK — Prince Louis Tomlinson’s first charity initiative was launched tonight, part of a series of high-profile events meant to shine a light on what the Prince called ‘highly important and incredibly pressing philanthropic issues.’

Prince Louis, who wore a replica of the Prince’s Ceremonial Regiment outfit most notably worn by his father at his wedding to Queen Johannah in 1989, hosted a charity dinner tonight at the historic Banqueting House. At five thousand pounds a plate, the prince raised nearly a million pounds benefitting the London Humane Society.

Attendees tonight included Prince Louis’ close friend Prince Niall Horan, of Ireland’s County Westmeath, and Prince Harry Styles, who exceeded even high expectations in Gucci loafers and his own military outfit, which Vanity Fair’s fashion editor Julie Stairbaun called, “defiant and delightful.”

* * *

 

Reginald has decided he will tolerate Louis at exactly two times each day: immediately after Louis wakes up, which is when Reginald will sit on his chest and make a sound not unlike a choking rooster until Louis gets up, and at about five o’clock in the afternoon, when he is given his dinner and is then allowed to sleep until bedtime, which is when he decides it is Time To Hunt and chases after dust bunnies and the motionless strings of Louis’ hoodies. 

Any other time, he and Louis treat each other like roommates with irreconcilable opinions on politics and TV programs. It's a strained, if survivable, situation.

Reginald is still not invited to charity events.

* * *

 

It’s the night of the second charity event, and everything is terrible.

“It's like you're doing this on purpose,” Louis says through a gritted-teeth smile as Harry takes the seat next to him. Liam gives Louis a bullshit wide-eyed look of innocence.

“No idea what you're talking about,” he says. “I definitely don't have the time to arrange these events to be annoying for you personally.”

“I'm going to sneak in and kill all your stupid house plants,” Louis hisses, but Liam just waves sunnily and moves on to manage something else.

Tonight's event is something new, a little experimental; everyone is still dressed to the nines, because they don't know any other way to live, though this time in casual wear. Thousand pound blouses and eight hundred quid jeans as far as the eye can see, which is basically useless because everyone is also wearing large, shapeless beige aprons with _MAKE A “DALMATIAN” TO YOUR LOCAL SHELTER TODAY!_ printed across the tops.

Tonight, the rich and famous are sitting in a basic step-by-step painting class, and the art at the end will be auctioned off for charity. They're all painting the same picture — a cat sitting next to a dog, a bird perched on the cat’s head like some sort of greeting card — which Liam says will foster everyone's competitive spirit.

“This way, someone wins at the end!” Liam had said. “Everyone likes an event with a clear winner.”

Louis hates Liam sometimes, especially when he's right. The small, modern event space they'd booked is filled with the chatter of dozens of excited people, and Louis has been thanked over and over again for the innovative new way to raise money.

He _would_ be happy, except for who he's sat next to.

Prince Harry brought his own paint palette and handful of severely used brushes, which he tosses into the pocket of his apron like this is just an average Saturday for him. There's a spot of purple on the dip of his hand between his thumb and pointer finger, like he painted all day to get in the zone.

He's wearing a fucking _beret._ What a gigantic _tosser._

“Louis,” he says lightly as the instructor at the front of the room tells them to start pouring out the dark brown paint for the body of the dog. Louis pours too much and it drips off the edge of the palette; Harry pours the perfect amount and finishes off the little mound of paint with a flourish like an uppity barista. “How's Reginald?”

Louis says, “Fine,” instead of _he startled himself when he saw his reflection in a mirror and hid in the shower until I turned the water on, then proceeded to attach himself to my leg with his claws,_ which is a far more honest answer.  

In the end, Louis’ animal friends painting looks more like a discolored human toddler leaning on a small walrus with a violently yellow bar of soap hovering ominously over their heads. Harry's looks perfect, and he even had time while everyone else struggled along to paint an entire background scene.

“They're at a garden party, see,” Louis hears him telling someone.

“That's fucking sick, mate,” says the person. Louis looks up and wipes sweat off his brow, outraged.

“Niall,” he hisses. Of all times, _now_ is not the time to be fraternizing with the enemy.

“Oh,” says Niall. “Yours is, uh. It's great too, Lou. Real proud.”

Louis throws a paintbrush at him, and at the end of the night Harry's painting is sold for nearly twenty thousand pounds to a rich old lady who eyes Harry like she plans to take him home, too.

Harry buys Louis’ painting for five hundred quid.

* * *

 

That night, when Louis steps into his dark suite of rooms back at the palace, he lets out a slow, deep breath that feels like it has been stuck in his lungs all night. He forgot just how exhausting being a prince can be, and he's signed up for a lifetime of this. A lifetime of smiling blandly next to His Royal Assface Harry fucking Styles just in the off chance someone is sneaking a picture of him from across the room.

There's a loud thump and Reginald tumbles out from under the bed. “Hey, Reg,” Louis says, which is ignored by Reginald in favor of batting at Louis’ ankles, hopping and biting and rolling about.  After about fifteen seconds of intense work, Reginald slumps onto his back with his paws curled in the air, panting. “Yeah, bud, me too,” Louis sighs, and scoops up Reginald to take him to bed.  Reg growls but seems to agree with the end goal, so he allows it.

It's silent for a few moments as cat and prince lie together in the dark, then Reg lets out a sleepy _mrow_ and lays one paw on Louis’ forehead.

He might not admit it in the morning, but there in the moonlight with the pad of his cat's paw tickling his forehead, Louis gets a little choked up.

* * *

 

There’s always competition between royals. That was the first real lesson Louis ever learned, something he kept close in hand when he heard it from his father, a quiet, serious man who didn't have time for frivolous metaphors; he said what he meant, and so Louis made a point to remember it.

“They’ll say there isn’t a winner and a loser when two royals meet, but there is,” the king had said. “That moment of judgement is always there, in every interaction, lurking in every word, and to be successful you have to be aware of it.” He’d rubbed Louis’ hair affectionately, giving him a rare small smile. “Never forget that every other prince out there is looking for a way to be better than you.”

As Louis got older, he found that his father was absolutely telling the truth. State meetings, diplomatic missions, they’re all just measurements and subtle bragging, _anything you can do I can do better._ Nothing a royal does is ever without consequence, so every move is studied and calculated and has a thousand hidden meanings woven into it. Like children on a playground, jumping off of taller and taller obstacles just to prove it won’t hurt.

Louis met Prince Harry when he was thirteen and Harry was eleven. There was a summit of some kind, Louis can never remember the details or the dates or even the location, but he remembers everything about Harry and the way that one day changed everything.

The adults — the real royalty, parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents of all the kids at the summit — were off discussing trade embargoes or tariffs or something else terribly boring. To lighten the tension (and to create a few cute photo ops), everyone under sixteen was grouped together in a small room and served delicate hors d'oeuvres with tiny, elegant cups of tea. It was like playing tea party, complete with doilies on the tables and all the girls wearing overly large hats, and Louis was bored out of his mind. His little sister Lottie was still young and unselfconscious enough to be wholeheartedly entertained, her little lace gloves hiding the not-really-appropriate purple nail polish she'd insisted on the day before.

Luckily, at least Louis had Niall there, his best friend from boarding school and a fellow prince. They were discussing the highly important gossip of the Chancellor’s son — another kid from their school — kissing the daughter of the French dignitary at a state dinner two weeks before, when suddenly dusty waltz music was blaring through the room’s speakers, stirring the crowd of boys and girls to life.

The song faded in like a sunbeam. _Moon River, wider than a mile._

Everyone in the room was royalty or nobility-adjacent, and had been attending dance lessons since they could walk, and so they immediately recognized what they were meant to do. Being royalty didn't cancel out the awkwardness of being adolescent, though, and human nature dictates that boys and girls faced with interacting with each other will immediately separate to opposite sides of whatever container they’ve found themselves in. Girls clumped together to giggle about boys across the room, who had their backs pressed to the opposite wall in an attempt to seem nonchalant and cool, despite the panic sweat they were all attempting to ignore.

There was a ten foot gap between the boys on the straggling edge of their group and the bravest girls on the frontier edge of theirs, a no-man’s land that no one breached.

No one, that is, except Prince Harry.

Cherub-cheeked and cupid-curled, Harry stood next to his sister and charmed every princess in the EU with an easy, enthusiastic smile. His little military jacket — a pint-sized replica of the one that would be handed down to him when he was eighteen — was a bright red spot among the soft pastels of his companions.

Apparently, he hadn’t received the memo about how he should’ve been uncomfortable around all those girls, and Louis pretended that didn’t baffle him. He was pretty sure that was a staple of upper class boarding school life; Niall had a theory that it had to do with ensuring lines of succession.

“See, they take girls away from us until we’re out of school, yeah?” he’d explained to Louis when the theory was in its formative stages. “We get an education, free of distractions, blah blah blah. Then, when we run into girls out in the real world, we don’t know how to act around them. The first one we come across, we fall immediately in love,” he smacked his hands together to provide a visual, “we immediately get married, immediately have kids, and the royal line lives on.”

Louis had thought it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, at the time. He wasn't all that interested in girls, to be honest, and the whole thing seemed a little useless. Now, faced with a small horde of princesses watching his every move and making him doubt every choice he'd ever made, he wondered if maybe having an interest in girls wasn't a requirement for them being able to absolutely rule his life. Even though he had no stake in the proceedings, had no desire to pick a target and ask for a dance, Louis couldn't help but feel that every girl in the room had the power to crush him cradled in her dainty little gloved hands.

The giggles around Prince Harry intensified, and the princesses and duchesses surrounding him began to shoot pointed-but-not looks across the room. Louis felt his face grow hot, but pretended it didn’t, continuing to talk to Niall as though they didn’t notice anything outside of their conversation (which was mostly nonsense, since neither of them could concentrate: “Did you hear about, um…” “Yeah, that was. Uh _hohmygod she’s looking at-_ oh, nevermind. Yeah, that thing was wild, huh.”).

Another burst of laughter, and something happened.

Prince Harry stepped out of the safe confines of his group and straightened his jacket, eyes bright. And then he crossed the room, passing through the no-man’s land like it was nothing but one foot in front of the other, like the future leaders of a dozen different countries weren’t watching him with wide eyes, waiting to see what he was doing.

It was a big room, but even taking that into account it seemed to take ages for Harry to stop, and when he did he was right in front of Louis.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked politely.

“Uh,” Louis said. “What?”

“I’d like to dance with you,” Harry said again, like that wasn’t _completely mad_ to just come out and _say it._ Then, as though he feared that he was being rude, said, “Please.”

“I, uh,” Louis said, feeling like a spotlight was pointed straight at his face. Words were entirely out of his grasp, the world narrowed down to this room and his peers watching him in utter fascination like he was a show on telly. Harry was still looking at him — face tilted slightly up, having not hit his growth spurt quite yet — and he didn’t even look nervous, or embarrassed, or the hundred other emotions rattling inside Louis like ice cubes in an empty glass.

And, in the back of his mind, he couldn't help but hear the words of his father, reminding him that at the end of this interaction, there would be a winner, and there would be a loser. Louis wondered what Harry would gain if Louis said yes; he wondered if it meant he won if he said no.

Finally, panicked about the deeper meanings of little gestures and wondering how anyone gets anything done with all this subtext hovering around, Louis said, “No.” Then, panicking worse and tilting the words into a question, “Thank you?”

Harry’s face didn’t fall, but it did tighten, just a bit. He nodded, a polite tip forward, and then turned to walk back across the gulf once more.

And that was it, or so Louis thought. Tentatively, he thought that maybe if this _was_ a competition between the two of them, he might've won.

At the next meal, Louis was sat next to Prince Harry. Hoping to explain his response to being asked to dance, Louis murmured, “Sorry about earlier, mate.”

“Oh, no problem, _mate_ ,” Harry said agreeably, and then knocked his elbow into his glass of water so that it fell into Louis’ lap, shocking him into standing so the whole room could see his soaked trousers. Then, smile curling like a wisp of smoke, Harry said, “Whoops.”

Their relationship has only gotten worse since.

* * *

 

**@MariaMaria — 7 minutes ago  
omg omg im serving at the royal ball tonight **

**@MariaMaria — 7 minutes ago  
and i saw harry’s name on the guest list holy shit, its happening **

**@PrinceStylinson — 5 minutes ago  
@MariaMaria holy shit!!! take pictures and good notes i want to know EVERYTHING **

**@MariaMaria — 4 minutes ago  
@PrinceStylinson can't promise pics but will definitely tell what i remember. there's already so much sexual tension i can't fkcin breathe, and it hasnt even started yet!! **

* * *

 

Tonight, there’s a ball.

It’s the third charity event, and it’s almost funny; now that it’s widely known that Louis is stepping back into the spotlight, his events have become the invitations of the season. Liam has been able to charge exorbitant prices just for royals to hang out with other royals in a different setting for one night.

Tonight also marks the one month anniversary of Lottie coming to Louis with a secret that would end up rearranging his entire life.

And Louis is, in a word, exhausted.

While Louis originally withdrew from the spotlight for altruistic reasons, there were some aspects of anonymity that he selfishly enjoyed. For one, he didn't have to hang out with the same terrible, spoiled people he'd been forced to interact with since boarding school; for another, he could spend his evenings in sweatpants rather than formal clothes that itch and sit weird on his body. Lastly, and most importantly, Louis had slowly trained himself out of feeling like every eye in the room was always on him, and he'd even gotten to the point where he could move about and act with cautious freedom.

Not anymore. Liam wasn't allowing Louis’ mum or his sisters to come to the events because they would draw attention from Louis, and he understood that. However, it meant Louis was carrying the burden of all the attention on his own, a feat he hadn't had to do since he was a teenager.

So tonight, there's a ball, and Louis is dressed in his military jacket — ceremonially bestowed on him when he turned eighteen, because as heir he’d never be permitted to _actually_ serve — and severely starched trousers, forcing himself not to fidget as everyone waits for him to do something worth gossiping about. Photographers wander, snapping pictures, and Louis’ stomach growls because he’d been too nervous to eat anything.

Dinners and fun painting classes for charity are one thing, but full formal balls are something else entirely. This is the staple of royal life, networking and bragging all rolled into one; it’s not out of the ordinary for a ball to be the single biggest night of spending for the palace in a whole year. Deals are struck and enemies are made, and more than one convenient marriage has been arranged in the darker corners of the notable ballrooms.

This is a big deal, and Louis doesn’t want to be here at all.

He’s up on a balcony overlooking the room, watching the lower nobility arrive and disperse, pairing off for dances or sampling the food carried around by black-tied servers. He’s putting off making his entrance, and for once his procrastination is supported by Liam; it would be embarrassing for Louis to be the first one to his own party, making him look overeager and desperate. So he’s hiding up in the shadows in the rafters instead.

A hand claps him on the back, and he startles. It’s Niall, ever-present as the sun, and Louis is so glad to see him that his knees go weak.

“Liam said to tell you to get ready,” he says. “Also, he said that whenever you want to tell him why you’re doing this in the first place, he’s all ears.”

Louis grunts in acknowledgment, and reaches over to steal a swig from Niall’s glass of champagne.

“Why _are_ you doing this?” Niall asks. It’s quiet, lacking his usual surety and exuberance.

Louis shakes his head; Niall knows more about him than almost everyone else — and so does Liam, at that — but this is something he can’t share, despite how much he wants to. In addition to breaking Lottie’s trust, he also knows exactly what Liam and Niall would say. They’re both too close to the situation, too invested in Louis’ happiness to suggest that he do something he might not want to do.

They would have never agreed with Louis that he had to step back in the spotlight, ruining his quiet, calm life and retaking his place in the public eye as apparent heir. They knew Louis’ plan had always been to suggest Lottie for the throne, for her to go before Parliament and to be given the throne over him, and Lottie’s secret wouldn’t be enough to sway them that it was the wrong decision.

It’s why Louis didn’t ask.

“Well, if you’re not going to answer that, tell me something else,” Niall says. Louis, leaning his weight on his forearms against the balcony railing, looks over. Niall shakes his half-empty glass of champagne and grins. “Why the _hell_ couldn’t you get some actual alcohol in here? It’s your party, you should have ordered some beer and pizza and showed these uppity fuckers a real time.”

Louis feels the tension coiling in his stomach dissolve in a rush of fondness, escaping him in a small huff of laughter.

“Not my call, mate,” he chuckles, standing up straight and wiping his hands on his trousers. In the last few minutes the ballroom has filled even more, bright gowns and dark suits and the flashes from cameras. “C’mon, let’s… mingle.”

“Say that like you mean it,” Niall laughs, and follows Louis down a back staircase to the entrance. Liam appears, looking harried.

“Go on inside, I’ll find you in a few minutes,” he says.

Heads turn as Louis enters the ballroom, just as he knew would happen, but with Niall’s presence beside him he can ignore them. Louis snags his own glass of champagne and they meander towards the empty tall table on the edge of the dance floor, with the subtle white card and the gilded cursive _Reserved_ keeping the common rabble (of the nobility set) away.

People are still watching Louis and it’s still unnerving, but Niall chatters about his friend Gerry the gardener and his new car and people from boarding school Louis hasn’t thought about in years, and it keeps Louis’ anxiety from spiralling. At one point, some minor earl Louis sort-of recognizes passes their table and does a double-take at Niall, who winks broadly and grins at the flush that catches on the earl’s cheeks. Louis shakes his head, laughing, and nudges Niall’s side with his elbow like he used to do when they were in their dance lessons and all the girls flocked to ask to be his partner.

“Feel better?” Niall asks, settling with his hip against Louis’, a warm solid weight.

“Getting there,” Louis promises.

That ends quickly. A ripple passes through the room and Louis closes his eyes, just for a split second, because he knows what that means.

“Don’t look now,” Niall starts, but Louis waves a hand.

“I know. Who else could it be.”

Prince Harry’s in the doorway shaking hands with the doorman who took his coat, looking incredibly invested in whatever the poor starstruck man is saying. He’s silhouetted by streetlamps and camera flashes, carving him out of the darkness like manufactured lightning. A group of teenage girls, all with net worths equal to small countries and all, Louis knows from personal experience, poised and graceful in their everyday lives, huddle together about ten feet from Harry and watch him with eagle-sharp eyes, giggling wildly every time he brushes his hair back or switches his weight from his right foot to his left. He starts to walk away but, before he goes, shoots a devastating smile over his shoulder at his fan club, and one girl actually falls down.

He’s wearing the rainbow loafers again. Louis wants to set them on fire.

“Good,” Niall says, and Louis turns to shoot him a questioning look. He shrugs. “I was running out of topics to distract you with. Now you’ve got your own never-ending source of inspiration.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Please,” Niall says. “This is your chance, I’m actually _asking_ you to complain about Harry. You won’t get an offer like this again.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Louis says, flicking a quick glance around the room. He took his eyes off of Harry for just a few moments, and he just _knows_ that Harry is going to swoop out of the shadows at the most inopportune time, like when Louis has a mouthful of food or he's just said something slightly wrong that Harry can correct him on in front of everyone.

When Louis doesn't add anything else — still too busy scanning the room for threats of a curly nature — Niall groans. “Honestly, I know you're dying to complain about him. Just let it out.”

“I don't know who you're referring to,” Louis says darkly, “and he's not worth the brain cells I would use to discuss him and his stupid hair and those _shoes —_ did you see his shoes? _Gucci loafers_ with his military dress, it was so-” he stops, shaking his head. “Nope. Not doing this.”

“You were doing so well!” Niall cajoles. “C’mon, I’ll help, it’ll be like a word association game. What do you think about his shoes, Louis?”

“Don’t you have an earl to take home?” Louis grumbles.

“He’ll keep,” Niall says, sending another heartbreaker smile to the earl in question, who is watching Niall from halfway across the room with a hungry look on his face. “Besides, listening to you give a lecture on how terrible Harry is is more  fun.”

“Than sex?” Louis asks, raising an eyebrow. “I don't think you're doing it right.”

“I'm doing it right,” Niall says easily. “You're just underestimating your entertainment value.” He takes another sip of champagne and grimaces. He already complained, once more and at length, during his Distract Louis At All Costs monologue about the _weak-arse sparkle water_ that is the only alcoholic option tonight, lamenting for several long minutes about the collective world royalty’s inability to throw an event with a decent bar offering. Louis isn’t going to bring it up, though, because Louis is a _good friend_ who doesn’t throw his friends’ pet peeves in their faces.

Not that Harry is a pet peeve of Louis’, per se. He’s more like—

He’s more like a cloud that has hung over Louis’ head since he hit puberty. And everyone is staring up at that cloud, because it’s making cool shapes or throwing shade on people who need relief, or something, and everyone keeps remarking on how awesome and useful it is that there are still clouds like Harry who can do some good. And then people look at Louis, who is like— who is like fog on the ground, a cloud trying not to draw attention to itself, and they grumble about how wasteful fog is, how unnecessary, and how the world would be better if there just was no more fog.

And then, a year after Louis was outed as fog who… likes other... fogs, the cloud came out too. No one celebrated Louis, but the cloud was praised for his courage, his strength. And that’s not the cloud’s fault, but there’s not really anyone else to blame it on, either.

A hand on Louis’ arm startles him, and he barks, “Clouds aren’t all that great!” before realizing his extended metaphor was entirely in his head.

“You’re absolutely right,” says Liam, looking amused. “You tell those clouds.”

“Look, it— it doesn’t matter. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, for the moment,” Liam says. “This is the easy part; just provide alcohol—”

“Debatable,” Niall says, glaring at his champagne flute.

“— and give people space and music to dance,” finishes Liam. He checks the schedule on his phone and nods, then slides it into his pocket. “Everything seem smooth from your end?”

“Actually, I was just convincing Louis to go on his first Prince Harry Is The Worst rant of the night,” Niall says.

“Oh good, I didn't miss it,” Liam says brightly. He waves down a waiter and grabs his own drink. “Go ahead, Lou, whenever you’re ready.”

Louis shakes his head, sucking his lips against his teeth to keep the words in. He's a _prince,_ for god's sake, he can't keep slagging off his diplomatic allies just because they're the fucking _worst._ He has to keep his poise, and all. His _dignity._ Dignified people don't complain to their friends about stupid curly-headed nuisances just because they have to share a ballroom with them for a bit.

At least, they don't do it in _public._

Music starts up from a quiet corner of the room, subtle but recognizable: _My huckleberry friend, Moon River and me._ A few people set their drinks or purses aside and sweep onto the dance floor, but most don’t. Louis and Niall exchange a look, their noses wrinkled in distaste — even after all these years, dancing is Louis’ least favorite pastime. It’s not too bad with the right partner, but at something like this where everyone is watching Louis to see if he’ll snap at all the people watching him or run away screaming, drawing attention to himself is low on his list of priorities.

Which is, of course, when someone approaches and says, “Excellent song.”

Louis feels his shoulders stiffen without his say-so, and doesn’t turn to look at Harry when he says, “Yes, it is.”

There’s red again in the corner of Louis’ eye, the rough edge of Harry’s military jacket brushing Louis’ as he settles next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder. His rainbow-adorned loafers combined with the laissez-faire sweep of his white sash and his unruly, shoulder-length curls make him something wild in the constrained spaces of polite society. Something uncontained, almost. Like a clap of thunder, enough to shock an unsuspecting person into stillness.

It makes Louis nervous. It always has.

“A song like this needs to be danced to,” says Harry, and Louis wonders if he could cut Harry off if he stomped on his stupid loafer. He doesn’t quite talk himself into it before Harry continues, “What do you say, Louis? May I have this dance?”

“Same thing I always say, Harold,” Louis says. “Maybe next time.”

Harry hums. Louis chances a glance at him and he doesn’t look disappointed, or even surprised. As though he was expecting Louis’ answer, and was maybe even looking forward to it.

“A dance might do you good, Lou,” says Niall, who Louis had entirely forgotten was standing there. For a moment, the whole world had been him and Harry, their shoulders touching lightly, bright red uniform in the corner of Louis’ eye because he couldn’t look directly at it, and a beckoning dance floor.

But the world rushes back in.

“Yeah, lad, you seem a little tense,” Liam adds, bouncing on his toes like he’s eight years old again. “A dance might loosen you up a little.”

He doesn’t even bother to stifle his laughter when he finishes, and Louis shoots him a glare over Harry’s shoulder. “I’m fine, Liam, but thanks for your concern.”

“I should ask you to dance in front of people more often,” Harry says. Louis can hear the grin in his voice as clearly as if he was watching it unfurl for himself.

“You shouldn’t ask me to dance at all,” Louis says.

“Couldn’t hurt to-”

“Yes, Niall, _thank you,”_ Louis grits out. He turns to face Harry full-on for the first time, refusing to look anywhere but his face because he doesn’t want to give anyone even the _slightest_ idea he was looking at Harry’s wide shoulders or tiny waist or the never-fucking-ending legs. “I’m not going to dance with you tonight, Harold,” he says, keeping his voice pleasant, highly aware of the number of people probably watching right now. “Not tonight, not ever. Just give up.”

And Harry, smiling just as beatifically right back at Louis, says, “No.”

* * *

 

**@TheSunUK — 10 minutes ago  
.@WriterRobWringer is at the royal ball tonight with exclusive access to an interview with #PrinceLouis himself. Video to come! #RoyalBall **

**@MariaMaria — 6 minutes ago  
No interaction yet but i also havent been really able to watch **

**@MariaMaria — 5 minutes ago  
NO WAIT THEYRE TALKING NOW **

**@MariaMaria — 5 minutes ago  
Cant hear anything but l looks SO frustrated. think h is teasing him? he’s smiling **

**@PrinceStylinson — 4 minutes ago  
@MariaMaria HARRY IS MAKING LOUIS SMILE???? MY HEART **

**@MariaMaria — 3 minutes ago  
BEST. NIGHT. EVER. **

* * *

 

Two hours into the ball, Louis sneaks a smoke break.

It’s not a good idea. The building is infested with reporters and paparazzi, as well as a hundred of his peers who, with one quick picture, could have easy blackmail material. But that’s part of the reason he does it; he needs, just for a moment, to feel like he has that level of control over his life again. To feel like he can do what he wants without a planned itinerary and a security guard.

The night’s not as bad as he thought it would be, at least, even despite the bad start. Harry left him alone after continuing his tradition of flustering Louis by asking him to dance, and the longer the event lasts, the more people drink and dance and worry about their own selves instead of whatever Louis is doing.

Louis taps out a cigarette and cups his hand to light it, drawing in a deep breath. He’s meant to quit smoking for ages now, mostly because it’s not ever as cool to smoke when you’re twenty-seven as it was back when you started at sixteen — the legality of it takes the fun away, and of course there’s the overarching grasp of mortality that seems to solidify with becoming an adult that just doesn’t seem to exist in teenagers.

Louis exhales and tilts his head back, the hazy night sky overhead obscured by the cloud of smoke.

“Hope you don’t mind if we do our interview now,” comes a voice from the shadow, and Louis coughs in surprise, smoke caught in his throat. He whirls around and finds the reporter he hates standing there, phone already out and probably already recording. He doesn’t have any particular kind of expression on his face and he still radiates sliminess somehow, like he just came from raiding Louis’ underwear drawer.

“Prefer to wait, if you don’t mind,” Louis says. “And you aren’t taking pictures out here, right?” He hides his smoke behind his back anyway, just in case.

“No, we’ll use the pictures from inside,” the reporter says. Rob, Louis thinks his name is. “Better lighting, you can see _everything.”_ He leers at Louis like Louis is supposed to take that as a compliment; he doesn’t. “And I’d love to wait as well, except I’ve got a midnight deadline on this.” He makes a face that, on a less creepy person, would be a pout. “Sorry, you understand.”

Louis sighs and waves his hand for Rob to proceed. He takes one last drag, looks longingly at the unsmoked half of his cig, and stubs it out against the brick wall surrounding the garden he’d stumbled across.

“Excellent,” Rob says. “Let’s start with tonight’s event.”

He asks a few standard questions that Liam had already prepped Louis for, the benefits of the charities they’re donating to and his personal connection — through Reginald, the feline Beelzebub — to the cause. For a moment, Louis thinks this might actually be painless… and then Rob’s bland smile tilts into something more dangerous.

“Of course, the big question on everyone’s mind is _why,”_ he says. _“Why_ are you rejoining the public royal life now, when over the last decade you’ve been nearly impossible to pin down?”

“As I said,” Louis says, “I didn’t realize what great work the Humane Society did until—”

“Yes, yes, your cat, it’s a charming story,” Rob bats Louis’ half-finished answer out of the air. “But that can’t be it. C’mon, Your Highness, I don’t have to use a direct quote.” His smile is increasingly sharklike. “We can say it’s a source close to your family. I just need to know _why.”_

Louis frowns. “No.” Then, swallowing hard, “There _is_ no why, it’s because of Reg, because of my cat—”

“Are you trying to prove to the Queen you’re still the right person to take the throne next?” Rob wheedles. He takes a step closer, as though he’s going to seduce the answer out of Louis. His voice gets quieter. “There are rumors, of course, that you went to your mother and said Charlotte was better for the job. Are you taking that back? Changed your mind?”

His hand has, somehow, found its way to lock in a vice grip on Louis’ forearm. Louis, grimacing, shoves the hand away and steps back. He forces back the first few things he wants to say — _how DARE you — if you write a word of this I’ll — we still have a Tower and I can find a rope —_ and says, “No comment,” before spinning and walking away, taking random turns, left, right, another right, until he can’t hear anything except the pounding of his pulse in his own ears.

Oh, _God_ . He’s not sure he could have _been_ more obvious, not without handing over a signed confession. _I, Crown Prince Louis, Duke of Kensington, Protector of the Commonwealth, do declare that I handed my responsibilities off to my younger sister and have now been asked to go back to doing my job._ He might as well have topped it off with another secret, maybe that Fizzy quietly believes there’s no use to the monarchy in modern times or that he himself has three different men on speed dial when he want quick sex with no worries about someone going to the press.

Louis falls back against the cool wall of some hallway, close enough to the ball that he can hear the subtle strains of music but far enough that the chatter of the partygoers is just a gentle babble instead of individual words. He tries to breathe deeply and finds the air catching the inside of his throat.

He doesn’t want to go back to the ball.

“Fancy seeing you here,” someone says, and suddenly everything is even _worse._

“Please go away,” Louis says. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back against the wall; he doesn’t care how vulnerable it makes him, not right now. “I don’t have time to do our little arguing thing, I have actual problems.”

Instead of footsteps walking away, they come closer; Gucci rainbow loafers on the cool, slick stone of an ancient hallway. “‘Our little arguing thing,’” Harry repeats, a soft mocking tilt to his words. “That’s not what I’d’ve called it.”

“What would you call it, then?” Louis asks. Harry doesn’t answer, just shuffles his feet enough that they scrape against the floor.

“Are you hiding from your own party?” he asks instead.

“Yes,” Louis answer baldly.

He knew the first few times back in the spotlight would be the hardest, he really did. He understands how habits work, conditioning or whatever; he’s very well educated, after all. It’s just that this particular habit is more than just training himself not to bite his nails or to write daily in a journal — this is something that not only requires changing his own behavior, but everyone around him as well.

Louis was seventeen when he sat across from his mother in her office at the palace — more official, that way, and less like he was begging his mummy not to make him do things he didn’t want to do — and said, _I’m not the best one for the job._ And then, when his mother didn’t answer, said, _Lottie should be the one on the throne._

Ten whole years ago Louis negotiated his birthright with his mother, and he’s become set in his ways since then. He knew his lot in life, which was an almost comforting state of being; he’d be given an honorary dukedom somewhere outside of London, and Lottie would stand in front of Parliament to be voted onto the throne after their mum — unusual, but not unheard of. Louis would never be able to blend in with the rest of the world but at least he’d be out of sight, maybe able to breathe just a little bit better without worrying that any wrong move would bring the monarchy tumbling down.

Anyway, to digress — Louis has been a national celebrity since before he was born, but it’s been ten years since he’s really embraced that. It’s weird knowing that Lottie isn’t here to maneuver into the spotlight in his stead, or the twins, and that every eye in the room is on him because he orchestrated the event for that exact purpose.

Much as he hates to admit it, Louis knows Harry was right when he tore Louis’ excuses to shreds as they sat side-by-side at that first dinner: these events are as much about clearing his name of any bad gossip as they are to raise money for a cause.

He finds himself wanting to revert back to the status quo, though; looking effortlessly calm and collected in front of a room full of people who paid a lot of money on the off chance they’d get to see you fail is _exhausting._ Louis isn’t a hundred percent sure, but he thinks a forty-five year old baroness tried to _trip_ him earlier. He’s been on red alert since the moment the first event was announced, and he’ll continue to be on red alert until the last one is finished.

Months from now.

 _Whatever,_ he just wants to go drink something that isn’t terrible fucking glitter water — oh, hell, he’s starting to sound like Niall — and fade back into somewhat known obscurity.

“God,” Louis groans, and rubs a hand on his forehead. He laughs quietly, tired and overwhelmed. “I do not want to be here.”

“Then go,” Harry says.

No, that’s not what he—

What?

Louis’ eyes snap open and he turns his head towards Harry. He, too, looks run-down and tired, like he doesn’t want to be here any more than Louis does. His eyes are closed too, and Louis wonders what they looked like before, same defeated slump of shoulders against old brick, same tired bend of the neck.

Two people who should be on top of the world and are hiding instead in the back hallways of a palace, trying to be okay.

“We can’t go,” Louis says.

“Why not?”

“I-” _want to go, yes, let’s just leave —_ “ _can’t,_ I have to make a speech and I’m sure Liam is freaking out—”

“They have a plan in case you backed out of the speech, I guarantee it,” Harry says. “Honestly, Louis, what’s stopping you?”

For a moment, they regard each other, possibly for the first time without any aggression or dislike. They aren’t on opposite sides of a thick dividing line anymore, Louis realizes; they’re on two sides of the same coin.

They’re just the same.

“You don’t like me, do you,” Louis says. It’s not a question.

“There are times I daydream about wearing all white to your wedding, just to upstage whatever poor girl you marry and ruin the biggest day of your life,” Harry agrees without missing a beat.

“If you had the choice between lying to save my feelings and telling the truth and hurting me—”

“I'd tell the truth,” Harry says, then narrows his eyes. “Unless that's what you wanted me to do.”

Louis huffs a laugh without meaning to, then narrows his own eyes in return. “Yet you want me to leave because it’ll make me happier.”

Harry doesn’t answer, just watches Louis with the same kind of intensity he recognizes from the little boy all those years ago, nine years old and in a miniature version of this same red military jacket, asking Louis to dance.

Louis can’t believe he’s actually considering this. He says, “This is a bad idea.”

Harry grins, roguish and sharp. “Of course it is, that’s the fun. Now come on, show me the way out.”

“Wait.” Wait. _Wait._ “You’re coming too?”

“Well I’m definitely not staying,” Harry snorts. “Not when the one person of any interest is sneaking out the back door.”

“Back door?” Louis frowns, confused. “I was just going to go up to my suite and sleep.”

Harry drops his hand, looking disgusted. “You’re going to waste a perfectly good opportunity to sneak out and have fun in order to take a _nap?”_

“Well, and I need to feed my cat—”

“No, absolutely not,” Harry interrupts. “This can’t stand.”

“What, are you a dog person or something?”

“No, that’s—” Harry stops, huffs out through his nose. “I’m an equal opportunity pet lover, that doesn’t— That’s not the _point.”_

“Then what are you talking about?”

“You’ve been out of the spotlight, so you missed all the bad parts about being a prince,” Harry says, then holds up a hand as though Louis was about to interrupt him. “And I don’t know why, and I don’t care. Don’t bother telling me. But I _do_ know that if you spent ten years missing out on the bad parts of royalty, you missed all the good parts too.” He holds out his hand again. “Let’s go enjoy the perks of the job.”

Louis still can’t believe he’s even still standing here. He could already have taken a back staircase up to his rooms by now, could be in his pajamas and fighting over pillow space with Reginald.

“I still don’t like you,” he tells Harry warily.

“Yes, well, whatever you're feeling, it's mutual.” Harry wiggles his fingers on his outstretched hand, impatient. “ _Now_ can we go?”

Louis, feeling like he’s stepping off the edge of a cliff, takes Harry’s hand.

They run.

* * *

 

… And they almost make it.

Louis leads them around corners and through the old servants’ passages, using his phone flashlight to avoid cobwebs and loose stones in the floor. Harry complains about the dust and sneezes a couple of times, but Louis ignores him.

They’re still holding hands. Louis doesn’t know why, but it’s a good excuse to tug Harry along when he stops to inspect a tapestry showing Louis’ murderous great-great-great-uncle (“He looks like you. Looks like he has your temperament, too.” “Shut _up,_ Harold.” “Well, see, am I wrong?”).

They take a staircase up, creep along a passageway past empty drawing rooms and a formal dining room Louis thinks his mum has used maybe three times in total, then back down another staircase. They’re mere feet from a side exit that will lead them out to the grounds when Louis hears his name.

 _“Louis William Tomlinson.”_ It’s a whispered threat, which is the worst kind. _“What_ do you _think_ you’re _doing?”_

“Bodyguard?” Harry whispers.

“Worse,” Louis answers miserably. “Best friend slash assistant.”

Harry hisses a sympathetic breath in through his teeth. Louis wheels around, palms out to stop any sort of nipple attack Liam might decide to dole out, and grimaces apologetically.

“Listen, Payno—”

“Do _not_ ‘Payno’ me,” Liam says, marching up and poking Louis in the chest. “You’ve been missing for twenty minutes! And now you’re, what, sneaking out?”

“Erm—”

“With _Harry?”_

“Hey,” Harry frowns.  

“And that idiot reporter said something about some sort of _exclusive,_ did you _talk_ to him?”

“No, well, yes—”

“Louis, what the fuck! The only reason I’m doing all this is because _you_ asked for it—”

“Lottie has a boyfriend!”

The words echo against the walls, like they had been just as desperate to escape as Louis has been. Harry stills behind Louis, his hand tightening; Liam, conversely, stumbles back. “What?” he asks weakly.

“Lottie has a boyfriend, and he’s not a noble and he’s not rich, so she can’t be with him and be Queen,” Louis says all in a rush. “She asked me to help, Li, I couldn’t say no.”

“You _could’ve,”_ Liam says sadly. “Lou, it’s not too late, you don’t have to—”

“No, no, listen to me,” Louis says. “This is why I— no. I’ve put off my responsibilities long enough. I’m the crown prince, I’m heir to the throne.” He shakes his head. “I can’t keep trying to shove that duty onto someone else just because I—”

 _Just because I got scared._ He doesn’t say it, but he means it.  

“Louis,” Liam says, but doesn’t add anything else. For a long moment they just look at each other. Then: “Are you leaving?”

“I,” _don’t know how to answer that —_ “want to, yes.” He swallows, pretends that Harry isn’t still standing there, holding his hand like they’re childhood buddies out on an adventure, rather than people who can't really stand each other. “I, I need _air,_ Li.” Another deep breath. “And I didn’t tell that fucking reporter _anything,_ you have to believe me. He guessed at some vague stuff but I didn’t confirm or deny, it’s pure bluff and we can sue the hell out of him if he—”

“It’s fine,” Liam says. He sounds a little strangled, but like it might be in a good way. Strangled with love, maybe. “Go.”

“You— what?”

"Go,” Liam says. He turns to Harry. “Don’t let him get caught doing anything stupid.”

“Aye-aye, cap’n,” Harry salutes. He eases open the door and tugs on Louis’ hand.

“You’re the best in the world, Payno,” Louis says, walking backwards so he can see the exasperated affection creep across Liam’s face.

“I know,” he answers. “Have fun.”

When the door closes behind them, shutting out the sounds of the ball still in full swing, it sounds like an old clock striking for a new hour.

* * *

 

**@MariaMaria — 8 minutes ago  
THEYRE GONE THEY LEFT **

**@MariaMaria — 7 minutes ago  
IM SEEIOUS YALL RHEYRE GONE. SNUCK OUT TOGTHER, NO ONE KNOWS WHER THEY ARE **

**@MariaMaria — 6 minutes ago  
IM FUCKNG SERIOUS LOUIS SNUCK OUT THEN HARRY!!! AND NOW THEYRE  JUST GONE **

**@PrinceStylinson — 4 minutes ago  
@MariaMaria WHAT **

**@MariaMaria — 4 minutes ago  
SOME GUY IN CHARGE TOLD US NOT TO WORRY ND KEEP SERVING BUT THEY R DEF GONE **

**@MariaMaria — 3 minutes ago  
JUST HEARD LOUIS’ ASSISTNT SAY THIS WASNT PLANNED **

**@kimmyandthejets — 3 minutes ago  
@MariaMaria @PrinceStylinson what the fuck is going on in here on this day **

**@PrinceStylinson — 2 minutes ago  
GUYS this guy's a fuckface but i do think he's actually there **

**____________________________**

**@WriterRobWringer — 8 minutes ago  
         No sign of @PrinceLouis or @Real_Prince_Harry in  
         30 mins.  Checking w/ sources to see  
         if princes left together @TheSunCeleb**

**@MariaMaria — 1 minute ago  
WILDEST NITE OF MY LIFE #LarryIsReal **

* * *

 

Outside, in the cool night air, still wearing incredibly conspicuous outfits and looking as out of place as it’s possible for one to be, Harry's plan seems even worse than it did inside. It’s like Louis agreeing to go along with the plan made it immediately become terrible. Like this was at drinking-at-three-P.M.-for-no-reason terrible and then he agreed, so now it’s at doing-a-panty-raid-on-your-own-mum levels of terrible. 

“What do we do now?” he asks, and when Harry just shrugs, grinning unrepentantly, Louis leans against a nearby wall and laughs until his ribs hurt.

“This is ridiculous,” he laughs, ignoring the panic that's telling him to run back inside, to pretend none of this is happening. “Honestly, what the hell. What am I doing?” He waves a hand at Harry, who seems to be mostly ignoring him and spinning slowly on the spot, tapping at his chin. “I followed this guy. _This_ guy. Who I hate. And who doesn't even know what he's doing.”

“I know step one,” Harry says, shooting Louis a look that says, quite pointedly, _get it together, man._ “And that's to get out of these clothes.”

Louis lets out another hysterical giggle. “Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson.”

“No,” Harry says, deadpan, “and no one else will tonight if we don't hurry up. Ah,” he says, “there's my favorite face.”

“You said you weren’t seducing me,” Louis says, and then jumps when someone appears right next to him, holding an expensive-looking tote and wearing a supremely unamused smile. “Holy shit! Uh. Who's this guy?”

“Well, I met your best friend-slash-assistant tonight, I suppose you should meet mine.” Harry says all this while unabashedly stripping out of his clothes, pulling off his military jacket and hanging it gently on a nearby lamppost, toeing easily out of his loafers. When he reaches for the zipper of his trousers, Louis turns away, flushing with surprise. “This is Mitch,” Harry continues, sounding a little bemused. “And don't take his silence for dislike, that's just how he is.”

“Hi,” says Mitch. He looks unsurprised that Harry has become naked in the confines of this conversation.

“Hello,” Louis says weakly. “Is this a normal thing, you meeting him for clandestine clothes swaps?”

Mitch shrugs. “It's not the first time.”

“Look at you two bonding,” Harry says. There's the distinct sound of him rustling through Mitch’s bag, tight cloth being pulled up over legs. “That's the most I've heard him say all week.”

“So, what, should I run back inside for my own clothes, or-”

“Nah, Mitchy brought extras,” Harry says. There's a pause, then something hits Louis in the back of the head. He turns around and scowls at Harry, forgetting he's not supposed to be looking because he's—

Oh. Not naked anymore.

That's good.

He's pulling an oversized sweater on over his head, thick fabric falling down and covering the laurel leaves tattooed on his hips. Louis looks down at whatever had been thrown at him and frowns.

“I can't wear these,” he says, stooping down and snagging the black jeans Harry had sort of given him. He has to hold them up near the bottom of his ribcage so the long legs won't drag the ground.

“Sure you can,” Harry says, clearly trying not to laugh. “Go on.”

Louis pinches his lips and decides, well, what the hell. This night can't get any weirder.

He shucks the stiff trousers of his military outfit in one swoop, yanking the jeans up over his thighs and wiggling a little to situate himself. His bum is bigger than Harry’s so the jeans are tight, but fit decently well. Louis bends to roll the legs of the jeans up above his ankles, and Harry coughs.

“Um,” he says, sounding strangled. Louis turns to shoot him a look and gets another article of clothing to the face for his trouble; he unballs a wrinkled black tee and sighs.

“I’m going to look like a trapeze artist,” he says, but takes off his sash and hangs it on the lamppost next to Harry’s jacket. His own jacket is next, then the thick white shirt underneath, the old buttons difficult to work through the buttonhole. He shivers when he’s down to his bare chest but throws the thin black shirt on anyway, the sleeves falling over his [knuckles](http://alivingfire.tumblr.com/post/156092606331).

“Perfect!” Harry says brightly.

“You can see my nipples through this shirt,” Louis says.

“Exactly!” Harry turns and ruffles Mitch’s hair, receiving a slap to his hand in return. “Thank you, Mitchy. We’ll be out late, don’t wait up.”

“I won’t,” Mitch says. It doesn’t sound like a joke. Mitch melts away as quickly as he’d appeared, and then it’s just Harry and Louis. Alone. For the first time ever.

“Now what?” Louis asks.

“Now…” Harry says. He’s clearly making this up as he goes along. Louis wonders what it says about him that he’s more excited for the possibility of the unknown than he would be if Harry already had a whole night planned. “Now we have fun.”

* * *

 

Fun ends up being a small pub not far from the palace, and not one of the nice, touristy ones. This one has pictures on the wall Louis is pretty sure haven’t been changed since before the Blitz, and there’s a thick coating of dust on all of them that make the subjects nothing but fuzzy grey blobs in front of other fuzzy grey blobs. Harry ambles up to the bar for drinks, and Louis tries not to look up from his careful perusal of the tabletop in case anyone recognizes him.

“There’s not a soul in here that cares you’re royal,” Harry says, thunking a dingy pint glass down in front of Louis. Louis frowns at him but doesn’t argue, taking a sip of his drink instead.

“This isn’t bad,” he muses. “What is it?”

“Amber,” Harry says.

“No, yeah, I knew that,” Louis says. “What brand is it?”

“Uh, amber,” Harry repeats. At Louis’ unamused face, he elaborates. “I don’t think it has a name. Now quit staring at the table like you’re about to get smacked with a newspaper, and enjoy your amber.”

Louis pulls the drink back towards him and downs half of it, which does nothing to soothe his dry mouth but at least gives him something to do. Harry smacks his lips when he takes his own long pull, then sets his amber down with a decisive thud.

“So here’s how tonight is going to go,” he says. “We do not like each other. At the end of tonight, we still will not like each other. You will think I’m arrogant and wear colors that shouldn’t exist on a natural spectrum, and I’ll think you’re pompous and boring. But tonight, we are using each other to get out of being at an event that neither of us are interested in. Got it?”

Louis drinks the other half of his beer before he nods. “Got it.”

Louis gets the next round, cautiously approaching the bar and not making eye contact with the barkeep as he stares at the three taps which, he finds, Harry hadn’t been lying about: one tap has a plain white label that says _IPA,_ one says _AMBER,_ the last says _OUT OF ORDER._

“This is,” Louis says slowly when he gets back to the table, sipping at his _AMBER_ amber, “not what I expected.”

The pub is quiet and orderly. There are three middle-aged men in slouchy sweaters speaking quietly by an old jukebox, and two old men and an old woman at the bar, none of whom are even looking at each other. The bartender is checking Facebook on his phone. The rugby match on TV isn’t even interesting.

“What were you expecting?” Harry asks. “Not that it’s my job to entertain you, of course.”

“Of course,” Louis rolls his eyes. “It was just your plan to leave in the first place.”

“You didn’t have to tag along.”

“I was the only way you could sneak out, remember?”

“I’d have figured it out eventually.”

“You utter asshole—”

“Anyway, you never answered my question,” Harry cuts Louis off with a sardonic smile. “What did you expect?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve seen you in the tabloids,” Louis says. “This isn’t your usual type of place.”

“Of course not,” Harry scoffs. “First of all, I’m not English. I’m not going to go out of my way to _look_ English and act English when I am not that.”

“S’not that bad,” Louis grumbles.

“And second,” Harry says loudly, “of course I’m not seen out at pubs like I’m a regular person. That’s not what I’m allowed to be.”

Louis blinks, sets his (once again empty) glass down. “Oh.”

Oh.

“My whole… _thing,”_ Harry continues, like Louis hadn’t spoken, “is to be the guy who knows he was lucky to be born a prince, and takes advantage of the benefits I get from being who I am. That’s me, in the minds of however many millions of people. I’m that guy.” He slogs down a massive gulp of beer. “So no, I don’t get pictured in pubs.”

“But you go to pubs,” Louis says. “I mean, you do normal things.”

“Fuck off,” Harry says. “You aren’t my therapist.”

“No, I’m just the guy you dragged to a pub and then the same guy who you snapped at for asking if you go to pubs,” Louis says. “Now come on, I’m being serious. Do you even like those places you go to? The sky bars and the posh VIP areas?”

Harry swipes his hair back out of his face. “I’ll get the next round.”

When he comes back to the table, Louis can’t help but get one more jab in, a final shot in the weirdest argument they’ve ever had: “I bet you actually don’t like those places,” he says. “The posh clubs and resorts. I bet you only go because you have to, and you hate it.”

Harry meets Louis’ eyes and they share a long, long look; it says a million different things and Louis only understands about half of them, but he knows most of them aren’t complimentary towards him.

Then Harry says, “So, the football,” and they never mention it again.

* * *

 

At two in the morning, Harry and Louis are shuffled out into the chilly night air by an annoyed bartender, who isn’t interested in hearing how much money Louis is willing to give him to let them stay, especially since Louis’ wallet is back at the palace and he has to promise his IOU is real and valid binding document, even if he spelled IOU wrong.

“It’s real, look!” he says, waving the napkin in the bartender’s face. He’d borrowed a stamp off a nice older lady in exchange for buying her a sherry with Harry’s money, and he points at it now where it’s stuck on the corner, incredibly serious. “That’s me mum. On the stamp. She’ll back me up! She can be my— my.” He turns to Harry, who is spinning slow circles on the pavement a few feet away. “Hey.” Harry doesn’t look up, so Louis throws his IOU napkin at him. _“Hey.”_

“There’s a star,” Harry says, pointing straight up in the air.

“That’s a plane, you donut,” Louis says.

“Ooh, _donuts,”_ Harry says.

“Hey,” Louis says. “What’s that thing called when someone co-signs a loan with someone else?”

Harry stops spinning. “Cosigner?”

“Yeah!” Louis says, snapping his finger. “That’s my mum, she’ll be my cosigner.” He turns back to the bartender—

Who is not there anymore.

“Not very nice,” Louis sniffs. He turns to see Harry waving down a cab. “Hey. Where do you think you’re going?”

“There’s a— donuts.” Harry nods, like he’s proud of that sentence, and clambers into the cab. Louis follows, because, well. Donuts.

The cabbie deposits them somewhere brightly lit, and when they fall gracelessly out of the car the air smells like cinnamon and sugar. “Oh my god,” Harry says, stumbling towards the small shop and pressing his face to the window. His breath fogs around him on the glass.

“Move,” Louis huffs, pushing at Harry, which turns out to be like trying to move a statue carved right in that spot. He finally pops Harry out of the way with a hip bump, then wrestles him inside when he gets the door open. “You have the money, you have to pay.”

“Oh, right,” Harry says. He digs his wallet out of his jeans and hands it to the wide-eyed girl behind the counter. “How many donuts can we get with that?”

The girl opens the wallet and says, “Um. There’s fifteen hundred pounds in here.”

“Cool, so a lot,” Harry says happily.

“You also have a condom and… I think this is Canadian money? It’s purple.”

“I was in Toronto last week,” Harry tells her. He’s bent down to stare through the glass at the small selection of baked goods. “Can I get that brown thing?”

“They’re all brown,” Louis snorts. He rolls his eyes exaggeratedly at the girl, whose nametag says _Hi, I’m_ _HANNAH_ _!,_ and says in an undertone, “Sorry, he’s smashed.”

“Right,” she says, mouth twitching. She must think Harry looks like an _idiot;_ Louis likes her.

“Hey,” he says, poking Harry in the side. “Hey. Give her a good tip.”

“She’s got all my money, she can give herself her own good tip,” Harry mumbles through a mouthful of chocolate donut. There’s a pink sprinkle on his lip.Then he smiles. “That’s _feminism.”_

“Fuckin’ right,” Louis says. “Hey, Hannah, I like that there is raspberry jam in that donut.”

“Is that what kind you want?” Hannah asks, reaching for her tongs.

“No, I just like that it’s there,” Louis says. “Can I get a chocolate one too?”

Hannah has to break a hundred pound note but Harry insists she keeps most of it as a tip, chanting, “E-qual-i-ty, e-qual-i-ty,” until she laughs and accepts. The receipt is printing when she finally says, “I thought you guys weren’t friends.”

“We’re not,” Louis says, then yells, “Hey, fucko, quit trying to leave me behind!” when Harry stumbles out the door without his wallet or Louis. “Sorry, gotta—” he says, thumbing over his shoulder.

“Yeah, of course,” Hannah says.

Louis smiles and turns, stuffing the receipt into his pocket and picking off a bite of donut. He’s most of the way to the door when he remembers: “Oh, Hannah. Could you… not tell anyone about this, maybe?”

“So you _are_ friends,” she grins. “I knew it.”

“No, we aren’t,” Louis corrects her. “I just hate him a little less than usual tonight.”

Outside, Harry’s wandering away, trailing donut crumbs in his wake. Louis follows until Harry finds a bench and collapses down on it, curling up and blinking sleepily. Louis sprawls out next to him, luxuriating in the experience of his snack.

“This donut is better than anything I’ve ever eaten,” Louis says.

“What is _that?”_ Harry asks, sounding groggy. He flings out his hand vaguely towards a nearby building.

Louis looks up and sees— well. Something.

It’s a massive painting, street art taking up the whole side of a building. The streetlamp nearby is throwing the picture into sharp contrasts, varied greys that are probably softer, wilder colors in the daylight. The shapes are provocative and glorious, making Louis think of old Roman statues of emperors in long gone cities.

But the shapes make no _sense._

“Is it… people?” Louis asks.

“It’s people-shaped,” Harry agrees. He’s still lying with his cheek pressed to the bench, eyes narrowed. Then he shifts, moving slowly until his legs are thrown over the back of the bench and his hair is brushing the ground below. “Oh!” he says, sounding genuinely surprised even though it took him a good forty-five seconds of maneuvering to get that way. “Look at it this way!”

Louis sighs, cramming the last of his donut into his mouth. He shifts awkwardly until he, too, is laying backwards on the bench, looking up at the painting upside down.

“Oh,” he echoes. “[They’re dancing](https://streetartnews.net/2014/03/cyrcle-reign-new-mural-london-uk.html).”

“On the sky,” Harry agrees.

Upside down, the shapes coalesce; a dark-caped man holds a woman up towards the ground, the two of them wound together like they don’t end and begin anywhere but instead circle into eternity.

A long time passes with Harry and Louis just looking up at the painting, taking it in. There’s something strong in the curves of the smaller dancer that draws Louis in, and it’s larger than life in a way that feels aggressive. Louis doesn’t know much about this sort of thing, but he knows he’d be okay if he just never stopped looking at this painting.

“Louis,” Harry finally says, cracking the silence. Louis turns his head, which is heavy from hanging upside down. Harry’s face is red from the blood rush, his hair a riot of curls falling against the dirty pavement. Even despite that, he looks ecstatic. “We found art.”

“Yeah,” Louis agrees. This night was stupid and ill thought-out and Louis has the terrible feeling that even though Hannah _promised_ she wouldn’t say anything, this night is still going to end up in the papers. It was a terrible decision, and selfish.

Louis grins at the two people spinning forever on a floor made of night sky, then he laughs.

Maybe one terrible, selfish decision isn’t all that bad.  

* * *

 

_ROYAL BALL SHOCKER! Prince Louis flees his own party, spends night out with mystery brunette  
by SHOWBIZ EDITOR Rob Wringer _

_Prince Louis spent Thursday night drinking with a mystery man after leaving his own royal ball, according to multiple eyewitnesses. The two seemed cozy as they shared a small booth at a local pub._

         @laylaaa — 26 hours ago  
         Prrrretty sure I just saw prince Louis  
         drinking at a random pub

         @laylaaa — 26 hours ago  
         @PrinceStylinson idk some guy? they  
         were in a booth together and talking, I was  
         just walking by and saw thru the window

_Louis wore a sheer black shirt and black jeans, and his companion was wearing a blue striped jumper, seen[here](http://hsfashionarchive.tumblr.com/post/151067482728/harry-for-another-man-magazine-issue-23-aw-16) at Paris Fashion Week. The pair looked loved up as they talked, and one Twitter user who spotted them called them “cosy.” _

_No one saw where the prince and his friend went after the pub, though rumors soon appeared claiming that Louis was at the Ritz booking a hotel room for himself and his friend._

         @heytheredelily — 24 hours ago  
         I HEARD PRINCE LOUIS WAS OUT  
         SOMEWHERE AND I SAW A BROWN  
         HEADED GUY AT THE RITZ I THINK  
         IT’S HIM

         @heytheredelily — 24 hours ago  
         I SAID HEY YOUR HIGHNESS AND HE  
         SAID WHAT? BUT I THINK HE WAS  
         JUST TRYING TO THROW ME OFF

_Prince Louis is known for staying out of the spotlight, though a source did confirm he is gay in 2009 after a video surfaced showing him kissing a male friend. While there have been many stories throughout the years connecting the prince to other close male friends, Louis has never confirmed any of these relationships._

The Daily Mail _reached out to representatives of the prince for comment, and they have not responded._

 _READ MORE ON_ _dailymail.co.uk._

* * *

 

_Lottie:  
brunch, antonio’s. 11:00. _

_Louis:  
You know we can't _

_Lottie:  
you know that's bullshit _

* * *

 

The knock on Louis’ door startles him upright, leftover product from last night sticking his hair to his face in a way he's sure is unattractive.

“Coming,” he calls, voice nearly shot. Coffee would do wonders for him right now, or tea. Or a gallon of scotch, whatever. Whoever it is knocks again, the sound just loud enough to irritate him; Reginald, who is not a morning person, yowls unhappily in agreement.

Louis throws on a dressing gown just in case it's someone official enough to be offended by pajama bottoms worn soft with time and a t-shirt so old the logo is barely a shadow of smudgy pink. He brushes sticky hair off his cheek, hopes to god his breath doesn't smell like the oceans of alcohol he drank last night, and makes his way from his bedroom to his parlor, throwing open the door.

“Morning,” Lottie says, smiling brightly. She takes in his rumpled state and raises an eyebrow. “Interesting sartorial choice. Bold.”

“I thought I said no to brunch,” Louis says, letting his sister in and shutting the door behind her.

“And I said that was bullshit, so,” Lottie shrugs, picking up a piece of paper from Louis’ desk and inspecting it, then another. “Come on, get dressed. Royal privileges only hold your table for so long after your reserved time.”

“Lottie,” Louis sighs, dropping to sit on the edge of one of the expensive-yet-terrible sofas in his parlor, nearly pristine from disuse except the one corner where Reginald coughed up a hairball once. “You know we can't.”

“False. What I _know_ is that I should be allowed to have a meal publicly with my brother without worrying about potential issues arising from that.” Lottie has the stern look down to an art form, making Louis’ shoulders draw up tight just out of instinct.

“If anyone found out-”

“If anyone finds out anything about me that I didn't want them to know, we’ll deal with it then,” Lottie says firmly. She's wearing a baby pink dress and pigtail braids, but her spine of steel is just as sharp as ever. “For now, I want to have brunch with my brother, and that is what is going to happen.”

Louis takes her in, her fake eyelashes with the little jewels in the corners of her eyes, the lipstick that is somehow the exact same shade as her lips. The fine gold chain of the locket she keeps tucked away, the rose gold ring Louis gave her for her eighteenth birthday. Shiny trinkets and pretty baubles hiding a well of power no one expects, except those keen enough to look for it.

She's one of Louis’ favorite people in the world, and for a second, righteous indignation wells up; how _dare_ anyone make it difficult for him to spend time with his baby sister? How _dare_ he not be allowed to do brunch?

“Fine,” he says, getting to his feet. “Fine. Give me twenty minutes, I desperately need a shower.”

Lottie smiles brightly, following Louis to his wardrobe and tossing an outfit at him. “Here,” she says, “and hurry.”

“You said the reservation’s at eleven?” Louis asks, stepping into the bathroom and sliding the door shut. He can still hear Lottie when she confirms, and asks, “What's the rush?”

“Can't a girl just want to spend time with her brother?” Lottie asks, muffled through the door and the near-silent fall of water from Louis’ shower head. “Also, I heard you spent all last night running around the city with Prince Dreamboat, and I'm going to need every detail on that.”

Louis splutters, knocks half his bottles of various soaps and shampoos to the tile floor, and determinedly doesn't dignify Lottie’s giggling _is everything okay?_ with an answer.

* * *

Princess Royal Charlotte Tomlinson was ten years old when she realized she could never fall in love.

Only ten, but she saw too much. Her mother was beautiful and loving but, by necessity, a little distant, roped into a corset of responsibility with the death of her husband the king. Lottie's sisters were too small to remember a time when their mother was the nation’s favorite, when she'd take the whole brood of baby royalty for strolls in the park as she charmed dignitaries and enemies alike, but Lottie remembered; she remembered her mother when she'd sneak into the girls’ suite late at night, her face free of makeup and wearing ratty pajamas she’d had since her coffeeshop days. Her shoulders would drop from their trained rigidity and she'd laugh and dance and bounce on the bed with Lottie and Fizzy and the twins, singing non-regal pop songs at top volume and organizing braiding trains.

Then Lottie's father died, and that all changed. Everything stopped along with his heart; not only did Lottie and her siblings lose a father, a _father,_ but the country lost its head, even if only ceremonially. The casket was lowered into the ground and Lottie stood there, stoic, one hand clutching Louis’ and the other wrapped around Daisy's. She didn't cry; she wasn't allowed to. But she thought, and she planned, and she accepted.

She couldn't fall in love — it wasn't possible, not anymore. She lost that the same way her brother lost the love of the inescapable spotlight, the way her mother lost the chances to sneak away for sleepovers with her daughters.

Lottie couldn't fall in love… but Fizzy could. Fizzy probably _wouldn't —_ of all of them, Fizzy was destined to be the scholar, nose in her books and ideas spinning through her mind like churning cogs. Fizzy didn't want boys or girls, Fizzy wanted justice for the helpless and peace for the innocent. Fizzy wanted a doctorate or maybe two, a position in the upper echelon that afforded her the chance to do things besides just look pretty in a gown. But maybe, in the distant future, someone would find Fizzy and match her word for sharp-edged word, energy for flammable, fire-hot energy. And she could have that; Lottie liked that idea. That if something was offered to Fizzy that she didn't know she even wanted, she could have it without a single hesitation.

And the twins, the precious little twins only four tiny years old, they could fall in love too. Even at four, Lottie knew that won't be an issue; Daisy unabashedly loved every single person she came across, deserving or not (and most of them are not). Phoebe loved less easily but more passionately, falling hard and fast for a little boy she met at a ball, a little girl who was the daughter of one of the public relations staff. Phoebe and Daisy could gather girlfriends and boyfriends like flower petals if they wanted, tossing them where they may with no scrutiny, no snide media remarks about being good matches or strengthening diplomatic ties.

No, that fell to Lottie. Even at ten, she knew. Louis… that wasn't Louis’ lot. He'd tasted a small sample of what life would be in the spotlight — the heir to the throne, the hope of a nation, carrying a hundred secrets and collecting more every day — and he'd balked. Lottie couldn't blame him; Louis kissed one boy and that kiss ended up in the newspapers, strangers by the thousands scrutinizing his technique captured by blurry telephoto lens, and she’s not entirely sure she wouldn't have withdrawn just the same.

Love was never on the table for Louis, not as heir to the throne; allies were more important than happiness. Even as he slowly took himself out of the public eye, Louis’ situation wouldn't change — he'd marry for power someday, not love, and if he was lucky it would be to someone of his preferred gender. His one spark of rebellion has been quashed before it could even become a real flame, and so Louis would sidestep love for the rest of his days, knowing the consequences and not risking those for the trade of the reward.

Lottie couldn't fall in love because her brother stepped back to protect the family, and so a political marriage became her lot in life as well with one fell swoop. Someday, when she was a respectable adult age but not so old people speculated that something was wrong with her, Lottie would be given three or four options of eligible matches that advanced the family line and secured their power, and she would choose one of those options, and she would be okay.

Lottie was ten, and she squeezed her brother’s hand as the king’s casket was lowered into the ground, and she planned on being okay.

Time passed; Louis withdrew even more from the public eye, reclusive by choice but lonely by force, smoking and drinking discreetly in his room while surrounded by close friends and no one else. Jay continued to govern with a firm hand, still kind and wonderful but still not able to sneak away to the princess’ rooms to gossip and sing Britney Spears songs at top volume. Fizzy still read as though she was in Alexandria two thousand years ago and was told she had a week before the library went up in flames. Lottie was sixteen, and a cute boy in a coffee shop offered her his number, and Lottie's chest fluttered and her breath quickened, but she said no, thank you, just the frappuccino. Lottie was eighteen, and she went away to uni to fulfill expectations, studying history even as her eyes caught on the fashion design courses. A different cute boy in her British Literature Since 1875 course sat next to her on the third week of class and asked, “You're the princess, right?” and when Lottie answered that yes, she was, he said, “Cool. Can I get your number?” and Lottie had to pretend she didn't hear him.

Then Lottie was twenty, and Louis was stuck in a routine so deep he'd have to hire a helicopter to clamber back out to normalcy, jealous of the way other princes could own their spotlights when he was never given that chance. Jay had crow’s feet and laugh lines and Lottie couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her mother without the pinch of overwork tugging at her mouth. Fizzy was at uni too, now, top of her class at Cambridge following in her father’s footsteps, studying political science and also biochemistry and perhaps gender studies as well. Daisy and Phoebe found their own little ways to be themselves outside of the roles of Princesses, just the same way Louis and Lottie and Fizzy did before them; Daisy chased boys and Phoebe chased girls unless they felt like switching, but kept it all as quiet as two teenagers possibly could.

Lottie was twenty, and she couldn’t fall in love, and she walked into a restaurant one night with her friends and her ever-present security. They were seated at a table that gave them privacy but still visible enough that the whole restaurant craned for a look, _there she is, there’s the princess,_ and Lottie sipped her wine and pretended she didn’t see. Lottie was twenty and she couldn’t fall in love and then a bright-eyed boy with a mop of wild dark curls stopped by her chair and said, “Hello, ladies, may I take your order?”

He was wearing a crisp white apron with the barest hint of a wine stain on the corner, and he had a five o’clock shadow that looked unplanned but still defiant, and he smiled liked the only worry in his world was that the group seated around the table in front of him wasn’t made up of his friends, at least not yet.

Lottie couldn’t fall in love but despite that she still did, just a little.

His name was Tommy and he didn’t hold back sly jokes just because Lottie was sitting there and he never avoided eye contact like she still had the power to send him to the noose. He filled her wine before she had a chance to deplete any of it and he drew a little smiley face with the vinaigrette dressing on her salad.

She was twenty and she _knew_ better, but on the way to the restroom at the back of the restaurant she grabbed Tommy by the apron strings and said, “I want to see you again,” and Tommy said, “What a coincidence, I want to see you again too.”

Their first date was highly planned and completely undercover; Lottie wore her distinctive platinum hair up inside a beanie and told her security that she was meeting her friend Megan at the movies, and then texted Megan and said she had to cancel. She bought a single ticket for herself and sat at the back of the theatre, clenching and unclenching her hands. She was there thirty minutes early, and she knew that was ridiculous, but as each second ticked by her stomach knotted a little more, worried she’d made this all too complicated for someone like Tommy to enjoy.

Two minutes before the lights lowered, Tommy crashed into the seat next to her and whispered, “This is brilliant, I feel like a spy!”

Lottie kissed him in the back of that theatre, and it felt like a secret worth keeping.

Two months passed, then three. Discrete texts and three minute phone calls, just to whisper _I was thinking of you_ and to hear _I can’t stop thinking of you either._ Secret rendezvous at tiny little cafes where no one looked twice at a young couple shyly holding hands, sharing a mocha and careful, elated smiles.

Lottie was twenty and she couldn't fall in love, but she did anyway.

And that was the whole future changed. Because Lottie had accepted her brother’ offerance of the crown and she would be queen someday… but not with Tommy by her side. Her mother’s grip on her power was too tenuous, their family’s position of influence too precarious; any wrong move could be the pebble that started the avalanche, people calling out for the removal of an ancient system of government they no longer needed.

Lottie was twenty and in love and heartbroken, and she did the only thing she could think to do.

She knocked on her big brother’s door.

* * *

 

“So you _weren’t_ at the Ritz last night, openly booking a room for yourself and another prince,” Lottie says, grinning madly as she stirs sugar into her tea.

“No, Jesus,” Louis says, dropping his head into his hands. “There was no hotel. Nothing like that.”

“So what _was_ there?” Lottie cajoles. “C’mon, Lou, I haven’t got to gossip about boys with you in _ages.”_

“This is not a gossiping about boys session, because Prince Harry is not a _boy,”_ Louis grumbles. At Lottie’s amused raise of her eyebrows, he edits: “Well, he _is,_ but not in a way that— there’s nothing between us. In that way.”

“It sure sounded cozy in the tabloid reports,” Lottie says innocently. “And we know celebrity journalism is the peak of truth.”

Louis snorts, shaking his head. “One article said we were caught ‘necking’ on the London Eye but ran away before anyone took pictures. How do you run away when you’re stuck up in the air?”

“My favorite was the one who said you were spotted in Amsterdam,” Lottie says. “You’re such a hoodlum, it must be believable that you’d run off to another country.”

“Jesus,” Louis says, shaking his head. “That was not the way last night was supposed to go.”

“You were like _Where’s Waldo,_ except your striped shirt phase was ages back.” Lottie laughs. “How _was_ last night supposed to go? Did you and Harry have _plans?”_

“No, of course not,” Louis says. “I hate that guy. Last night doesn’t change that.”

“Then why go with him?” Lottie prods.

“He was my ticket out of a terrible night,” Louis says firmly. “That’s it.”

His phone buzzes and, assuming it’s Liam, he doesn’t bother picking it up before unlocking it.

It’s not Liam.

_Unknown Number:  
I found it again. _

Under the cryptic message is a picture of a familiar, giant painting on the side of the wall. Two people dancing on the clouds of a bright day; in the light, Louis can see that one of the figures is orange, delicate and light against the charcoal dark figure holding her up.

Harry must have someone with him because he’s in the picture, his back to the camera, head tilted back to stare up at the artwork.

_Unknown Number:  
It’s called Reign. Ironic, isn’t it. _

“Sure seems like you don’t hate him,” Lottie says lightly.

Louis shoots her a glare and casts around in vain for a change of subject. “This is a nice little place,” he offers. Immediately, though, Lottie stiffens.

“Yeah, um,” she says. “Actually, there’s a reason I brought you here specifically.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Lottie says. She looks off to the side and nods, then continues. “I thought you should meet Tommy.”

“Oh,” Louis echoes, surprised. He looks up to see a tousle-haired young man crossing the room towards them, his waiter’s apron covered in a few stains and a few pens sticking jauntily out of his pocket. “If you’d like.”

“I just thought if you met him, if you saw how real this is, you would understand why I asked you to do what you did,” she says all in a rush. “So you don’t think I’m just some silly girl throwing everything away for a crush.”

“Lottie,” Louis says sadly. “You don’t have to prove to me, or anyone else, why you deserve to fall in love.” He reaches across the table and takes her hand. “And if this _does_ end up being just a silly crush, but it made you happy for any amount of time, everything was worth it.”

Lottie smiles and ducks her head, pink coloring her cheeks. Tommy is almost to their table when she whispers, “I think it’s the real deal.”

Louis raises an eyebrow at her and then turns to Tommy, who looks nervous.

Louis smiles, wide and sharklike, and puts on the scary big brother routine for the first time ever.

* * *

 **@DailyMailUK — 12 minutes ago**  
**BROTHERLY LOVE: Prince Louis treats sister Charlotte to brunch after mysterious disappearance from own charity ball. http://dailymail.co.uk/prince-louis-charlotte-drama…**

 **@SympathyForTheDevin — 8 minutes ago**  
**@DailyMailUK i thought they hated each other**

 **@l-l-l-l-lola — 8 minutes ago**  
**@SympathyForTheDevin @DailyMailUK nah the princesses tolerate him, i think he's just boring, not a terrible guy**

 **@SympathyForTheDevin — 7 minutes ago**  
**@l-l-l-l-lola they never hang out though? like i don't really like my brother all that much but we still interact sometimes. isn't this the first time anyone's seen him with his family in years?**

 **@l-l-l-l-lola — 5 minutes ago**  
**@SympathyForTheDevin i mean yeah, but we don't know their lives. i think the royal kids are all cool w each other**

 **@jamiegotagun — 4 minutes ago**  
**@l-l-l-l-lola @SympathyForTheDevin lol no, louie is the worst and everyone hates him, goodbye**

 **@SympathyForTheDevin — 3 minutes ago**  
**@jamiegotagun i mean in theory i agree except your bio says “prince harry’s future princess” so i feel like you have an ulterior motive here**

 **@jamiegotagun — 2 minutes ago**  
**@SympathyForTheDevin @l-l-l-l-lola @DailyMailUK @PrinceStylinson LOUIS IS STRAIT AND HARRY IS TOO QUIT FORCING SEXUALITIES ON THEM THEY HATE YOU**

 **@SympathyForTheDevin — 1 minute ago**  
**@jamiegotagun good point well made**

 **@SympathyForTheDevin — 1 minute ago**  
**#LarryIsReal :)**

* * *

 

The fourth charity event is two weeks later and it’s another art auction, but a real one this time, with actual art by people who don't have to do a glorified paint-by-numbers.

Louis is not allowed to sneak out of this one.

“I love you, you noble asshole,” Liam said before the left the palace for the museum, his hands squishing Louis’ cheeks. “But you had your one night of fun. No more.”

Louis mumbled out something like _digrsplenit_ but was meant to be affirmation of some kind. He'd gotten it out of his system, and it was stupid, anyway, no matter if it was a little fun in the moment. It was like the moments after taking a shot, when the world is still nicely spinning along at normal speed before everything is ratcheted up to warp speed when the alcohol hits his stomach.

So Louis is in a museum, pretending he knows anything about art other than the running commentary he keeps going in his own head: _oh, this one is very blue_ and _ah, yes, birds,_ and _judging by this person’s last name they are Welsh, so this must be symbolically representing the Norman invasion or the time the Welsh beat England at rugby._

“This is just a white square,” he accidentally says out loud at one point, but he stands by it. It _is_ just a white square, or off-white, more accurately, only barely distinguishable from the rest of the empty canvas.

“It's emptiness,” someone says, and Louis rolls his eyes even as Harry steps up next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “Loneliness. He feels like he's no different from the rest of the world and that he just blends, even if they're made of different materials.”

“Bullshit,” Louis says immediately. “You made that up.”

“Did not,” comes the answer. It's quiet for a moment and Louis looks at the white square on the white canvas, and he begrudgingly thinks that maybe he’s starting to get it when Harry says, “I disabled one of the fire exits.”

Louis suppresses a grin, but not very well. “Did you now?”

Harry trails his fingers along the back of Louis’ hand as he walks away, assuming Louis will follow. It's irritating, but so is everything about Harry, so it's not like that's unexpected.

When Louis catches up to Harry he's whispering something in the ear of the gallery manager, who nods and disappears without a word. Harry doesn't explain himself, just strides confidentially toward a door with an alarm attached and _FIRE EXIT_ branded overhead. Louis braces for something to go wrong, for the alarm to wail, but it's silent as Harry slips out, catching the door as an invitation for Louis to follow.

Down a flight of stairs, out a side entrance, and out into a back alley; Louis felt that same bubble of excitement he felt last time Harry swept him away, wondering what was next, where they would go.

Instead Harry salutes, grins, and walks the opposite direction from Louis.

And that was that.

* * *

 

Three weeks later, Louis is standing at the bar at a fundraiser for the preservation of a particular kind of lizard found only in one cave in Dartmoor. He’s waiting for the bartender to bring him his vodka soda when someone stands inappropriately close behind him and says, “I have a bone to pick with you.”

Louis sighs, accepts his drink from the bartender with a tired smile, and turns. “Hello, Harry. No, I won’t dance with you.”

Harry waves a hand. “Not what I was going to say.” Louis raises an eyebrow and takes a sip of his drink, motioning for Harry to get on with it. “A few weeks ago, when we—“ _shared a drunken night out even though we hate each other—_ “well, you know. That night, you said that I don’t even like posh clubs and that I force myself to go to them so that I can maintain my image.”

That was early in the beer count, but Louis vaguely remembers it, yes. “Yeah, and?”

“And I’ve decided I’m offended,” Harry says, announcing this with the same amount of gravitas one might use to announce he’s decided to switch from mint toothpaste to spearmint. “I take offense. How dare you.”

“Okay,” Louis says.

“No, you—“ Harry huffs. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Yeah, prove it,’ and then I was going to say, okay, I will, follow me, and we’d sneak out the employee entrance I spent twenty minutes scoping out. I had it all planned, but you went off script.”

“Ah,” Louis says. “Sorry, I’ll start over. Uh, prove it?”

Harry draws himself up, and says imperiously, “Okay, I will. Follow me!”

Louis drains the rest of his vodka and sets it back on the bar. The bartender isn’t smiling but there’s still something there in her expression that says she heard the conversation and will be laughing as soon as she’s able to. “I know,” Louis commiserates. “But he’s my ticket out of here, so I have to,” he points a thumb over his shoulder.

“Have a good evening, Your Highness,” she says.

“I’m sure that is not in the cards,” he replies. “But thanks for the support.”

Harry is standing impatiently by the employee exit, and when Louis appears he is grabbed by the hips and steered out into the conspicuously industrial hallway.

“People are going to start noticing we tend to leave at the exact same time at every one of these parties,” Louis comments idly as Harry steers him determinedly through the maze of hidden hallways.

“People never notice anything,” Harry answers.

“So where are we headed?” Louis asks. He holds up his hands as Harry pushes him towards a large door, and he flings it open thanks to Harry’s momentum.

“Nowhere, shut up,” Harry answers automatically, then sighs. “Sorry. I meant, nowhere, because it’s a surprise. I’m just all stressed because you did not at all go along with the conversation I planned, and it threw me off.”

Louis makes a _that’s weird, but whatever_ sort of grimace, but says nothing, because he isn’t going to apologize for not living up to the imaginary conversation in Harry’s head.

Outside is Mitch, holding the same fancy bag and the same vaguely bemused-but-not-amused expression. Louis takes a moment to reflect on it not being weird that he knows Mitch’s presence here means that he and Harry are going to be stripping down in this nice car park, and that now it doesn’t even really seem that weird. He just shucks his fancy trousers and pulls on what seems to be the same black pair of jeans from last time, and a forest green button-up that’s only a little too big.

“Not bad,” Harry says. He’s in a floral blouse that looks like the wallpaper in one of the rooms back at the palace, and he’s sweeping his hair back into a bun.

“Thanks, I had no say in any of this because you’re dictating my life choices now,” Louis shoots back pleasantly. Harry just throws him a thumbs up, because he is a moron.

“Night Mitchy!” Harry calls as they head towards the conveniently parked town car nearby. Louis sends Mitch an apologetic smile, and climbs into the backseat next to Harry.

“Here,” Harry says, handing Louis a bottle of champagne. “Drink as much of this as possible.”

“Aren’t we going to a club?” Louis asks, but he takes a swig anyway.

“Yes,” Harry answers. “But even though we both have enormous piles of old money and half our drinks will be comped for being, well, us, it’s still expensive to the point of being annoying.”

“Fair point,” Louis says. For a few minutes it’s quiet except the radio, soft pop floating through the air, Sia swinging from a chanda-la-lier. Then, Louis ventures, “So this is your answer, then.”

Harry has the champagne bottle up to his mouth, but his eyebrows make the question pretty clear, so Louis explains.

“You know, you said that you aren’t allowed to be a normal person so I asked if you even liked these types of places, or are they just necessary to your image? And I assume you taking me out to one of these clubs is meant to be your answer.”

“Do _you_ like these types of places?” Harry asks instead of answering, because he’s irritating as all hell.

Louis shrugs. “Not really? I mean, not that I’ve been to tons of clubs or anything, they’re just not my thing.”

“And by ‘not been to tons of clubs,’ you mean…”

“That I’ve never actually been clubbing,” Louis admits, along with an eyeroll. “I’ve seen _The OC,_ though, so I feel like I’ve got a decent idea.”

“You can’t form an accurate opinion without giving it a try,” Harry says; it sounds like a recitation from _The Party Prince’s Handbook_.

The car stops and Harry clambers out first; they’re in front of a nondescript building with a line of incredibly good-looking people snaking around the corner, and a bouncer slowly admits people only after a thorough once-over. Harry grabs Louis’ sleeve and cuts around the line, heading to a side entrance, and when the security guard there sees him he immediately steps aside.

“I feel like I’m in an early 90s film about how I was always beautiful, I just needed to take off my glasses for it to be true,” Louis says. Harry snorts, and directs Louis inside and up a small set of stairs. Music thumps so loudly that Louis’ shoes vibrate, tickling his feet, and he laughs quietly to himself in awe that he keeps ending up in these situations.

At the top of the stairs is another door, with another burly man who immediately steps aside when he sees Harry. “Your Highness,” he murmurs as they pass.

When the door is opened, Louis is nearly bowled over by the wall of sound. It’s almost tangible, pushing down on Louis’ ears and filling his mouth, so that all he can feel is the thundering bass and all he can see is the way Harry’s smile spreads. He mouths, _you ready?_ and Louis can only nod.

Inside, Louis’ first impression is of light. Light bouncing off of walls, light landing on bared skin and glittered faces, shining on liquor bottles behind the glowing bar. A tall, beautiful woman parts the crowd carrying a full tray of drinks, each adorned with a lit sparkler.

The dance floor is a conglomeration of bodies moving as one, but Harry and Louis are above it all, looking down. Up here, it’s all velvet booths and smooth silk curtains to shield people from prying eyes. Just from quick flashes, Louis recognizes three decently famous actors and a singer he previously thought was straight (though current evidence suggests otherwise).

Harry calls some nonverbal drink order to the man who leads them to their booth, and he reappears a few minutes later with two bright blue cocktails, sparklers hissing and flickering and leaving afterimage spots on Louis’ vision. Harry picks his up in a silent cheers and their glasses clink, though Louis still can’t hear anything but the relentless pounding of a heartbeat bass.

They can’t talk in a place like this, and maybe that’s the draw for some, but it means Louis spends long minutes trying to look at anyone except Harry. Since most people are closed away in their own booths, Louis doesn’t succeed, finding himself watching the way Harry bends and unbends his straw, over and over again.

“I thought we’d been dancing,” he shouts a few minutes later, but Harry squints and shakes his head, pointing at his ears. Louis rolls his eyes and scoots closer; the booth is round, so he can slide along the soft seats without having to get up and move to the other side.

He repeats himself, but Harry shakes his head again, mouthing something that looks like, _what?_

Louis huffs and scoots again, this time, he ends up all the way around to Harry’s side, using Harry’s shoulder to leverage himself up and put his mouth right to Harry’s ear. “I said,” he calls, and his lip brushes Harry’s earlobe, “why aren’t we dancing?”

Harry pulls back, and he’s grinning. He motions for Louis to turn his head, and when he does he faces the curve of Harry’s neck, bare and warm. “You couldn’t handle it,” he shouts, and Louis makes a face where he can see. Harry laughs, makes an _are you sure?_ gesture, and then when Louis nods, obstinate, he leads them out of the booth. He flags down their server and they’re led downstairs, which is so much warmer and even, incredibly, louder.

In the crush of bodies, Louis can’t tell where he ends and the crowd begins. Skin is everywhere and so are the sweeping, flashing lights. Under all of this, Louis isn’t a prince, isn’t a famous name among other rich and powerful people; under all of this, Louis is just a person, a nameless entity amongst other beautiful creatures. Under all of this, Harry’s hand finds Louis’ so they don’t lose each other, and they move.

Louis dances until he can’t feel his arms, his legs. There’s someone behind him and at some point it’s Harry, but then there’s someone in front of him and that’s Harry too. Smoke and sweat and perfume cloud together, more intoxicating than the drinks Louis takes when the woman with the tray passes by. It could be hours, it could be twenty minutes, but time is sacrificed to make room for the way Louis feels in this room, heady and wild and new.

A tug on his hand has him propelling out of the crowd, and then Harry is leading him to the bar. “Drink,” Harry says, thrusting a glass of water at him, and Louis slumps against the edge of the bar as he takes long pulls. Harry stares back over the crowd, eyes deep and world-heavy.

“Sometimes,” he says, and Louis is so close that he hears every word, “I wonder if I actually hate these sorts of places, but I’ve bought into my own stereotypes and have convinced myself I like them.”

Louis looks out at the crowd too. They took something from him, that dancing mass, his inhibitions and his sense of personal space but something else, too. Something intangible and indefinable, something like his naivety and his innocence, but he gave those away in return for vitality. For _life._

“Nah,” he tells Harry. He gets it, now. It’s dirty and hot and sort of terrible, but in the best way possible. “You were right, mate. This is fun.”

Harry clinks his water glass against Louis’, an innocent salute.

* * *

 

In early autumn, there’s another ball held at the palace, though this time Louis is only a guest. Some cousin of his father’s birthday, or something, Louis is not entirely sure. All he _does_ know is that Liam says he has no choice, he has to go.

“And for God’s sake, Louis, can you _please_ try and stay through at least half the event this time?”

Louis promises no such thing.

And it’s not just because Louis enjoys making Liam’s face turn that fun color of puce, or that he likes spending time in places where his titles and responsibilities don’t hover so menacingly overhead. This time, Louis wants to leave because he has actual work to do: a bill his mother has sponsored is taking criticism, and Louis has to read through the details and put together a speech in support before his own charity event in three days.

He doesn’t have _time_ to play prince tonight, because he has _actual_ royalty duties to fulfill.

So, for the first time, he’s the one who seeks Harry out.

“I want to leave,” Louis says.

“This is not nearly as much fun when you take charge,” Harry says, crossing his arms delicately. The woman he had been talking to stands awkwardly off to the side, looking as though she knows she’s not invited to this conversation, but also not really willing to walk away. Harry hasn’t seemed to notice. “What’s your idea of a good time, sitting and thinking about the consequences of your actions?”

“Don’t be cute,” Louis says. “I’ve got actual shit to do, and you seem to be the only one willing to work with me on evading my guards and getting upstairs.”

Harry sighs, gusty and dramatic. “You owe me.”

“Sure, whatever you say.”

Harry leads Louis toward a side door leading towards the restrooms and, coincidentally, one of the half dozen staircases that leads to Louis’ suite of rooms. They bypass the restrooms, chatting casually — Louis can’t even hear the words he’s saying, and he’s pretty sure they’re talking about cheese, of all things — and start up the stairs.

Until —

“Your Highness!”says one of Louis’ bodyguards, who are all far more scared of Liam than they are of him. “You’re not supposed to leave the party!”

“Shit,” Louis says. “Run!” He takes Harry’s hand and they dash up the stairs, along a corridor, through a side parlor and into a small reception room. “This way,” Louis says, throwing open a small hidden door next to the fireplace, used by servants in years past.

“I feel like Anastasia,” Harry pants, and Louis almost trips when he’s caught off guard by a laugh.

It’s not as if there would be consequences if they were caught — unlike Anastasia, ironically enough; Louis does live here, after all. But they would be forced back downstairs, at least until security got the okay to let Louis up to his own rooms.

Running away isn’t necessary, but it’s the _principle_ of the thing.

Louis hurdles the broken stair on the third floor and yanks Harry through a door hidden by an old tapestry, and suddenly they’re right outside his rooms.

“Mi casa etcetera etcetera,” he says, throwing open the door and letting Harry follow him in. “Reg, buddy, did you finally digest that sock you ate?”

Reginald flops out from under the bed and yowls a greeting; Louis takes that as a no.

“So, you weren’t kidding,” Harry says. He’s stepping cautiously into the room, sweeping glances around the walls and pristine furniture, all the things that have lived here for decades before Louis was born. “You just wanted to hang out in your rooms.”

“I wasn’t kidding,” Louis agreed. “Reg, this is Harry. He’s an idiot.”

Harry squats so that he’s closer to Reginald, who has stopped flopping back and forth on his back to inspect this new person in his space. “Hello, Reginald,” Harry says. Reg stands and makes his way over to Harry, dodging the hand he holds out to pet his head and sniffing interestedly at Harry’s shoes.

Louis leaves them to it and sits at his desk, pulling his mother’s bill toward him and trying to focus on the actual functions beneath all the legalese.

He can’t help but be hyper aware of Harry pacing the edges of the room, though, pausing on the bookshelves packed with English history books — first and second editions only, of course — and Reginald shadowing Harry’s steps, trying to bat at his shoelaces and mostly failing.

“I don’t know why, but I expected your room to look…” Harry trails off, “I don’t know. Different?” He grimaces a little. “Better.”

“That’s because none of this is my shit,” Louis says. He waves a hand towards the door to his den and continues, “Have at it.”

He hears Harry open the offered door and laugh once, then whistles lowly. “That’s more like it.”

“Feel free to use the TV, but the virtual reality kit has been on the fritz lately,” Louis calls over his shoulder, still trying to dissect a particularly difficult sentence. _Provided that Party A, in hitherto forward situations, complies with terms set forth by Party B in accordance with —_

“Is this a Mario Kart arcade game?” Harry shouts from a room away. “This is sick!”

Louis loses himself in the details of the bill — and agrees with most of it, though he has notes to pass on to his mother — and is only occasionally drawn back out of his own head by Harry yelling “You have _Pac-man?”_ or asking, “What are your Blu-rays organized by, is it— oh, is it genre, _then_ alphabetical? Oh okay.”  

An hour later, Louis rubs at his eyes and pushes back from his desk, noticing only belatedly that the room is suspiciously silent. He creeps to the den and peeks in, snorting quietly at what he sees.

Harry is sprawled out on the most comfortable sofa in the world — Liam’s find, and it’s pea soup green but acceptable because it’s completely covered in soft throws and pillows, like a human nest — with Louis’ copy of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ open on his chest, which is rising and falling slowly with the deep, even breaths of easy sleep. Reginald is sitting on the back of the sofa and staring down at Harry like he’s a particularly fascinating bug he’s going to eat eventually, but for now just wants to observe. Four of Louis’ arcade games are still blinking erratically (and, hell, Harry beat his high score on Asteroids, that can’t stand) and the TV is on too, showing the menu for some old Heath Ledger movie Louis didn’t even know he had.

Louis flicks on a lamp and switches off the overhead light, then quietly leaves the room. In the morning, Harry is gone, but there’s a couple of extra notes under Louis’ on the bill he’d spent the night before pouring over, and Louis has to admit they’re all decent suggestions.

He rewrites them in his own handwriting, though.

* * *

 

 _Transcript from_ BBC Radio1 Breakfast Show, _air date 8 November, 2017:_

_Sinead Garven: Lastly — and it's definitely last but not least, because I was saving this one so we'd have time to chat about it — the royal family was sent scrambling yesterday after a security breach in the palace during an event, which turned out to be none other than Prince Louis himself._

_Nick Grimshaw: Oh, right, I saw this on Twitter. Big fuss about nothing, wasn't it?_

_SG: Well, I think that depends on how you look at it. From the royal security’s point of view it's sort of a disaster, because the prince isn't really supposed to be anywhere without at least one guard, if not more. And then of course there's that little bit of embarrassment from the family’s communications team, who sent out an alert only to have to retract that when it was just the prince._

_NG: A little awkward, yes._

_SG: Of course, most people today are talking about what Prince Louis was even doing, because the spokesman for the family didn't release specifics on_ how _he was a security breach. Was he sneaking out?_

 _NG: Hmm. [Widens eyes exaggeratedly.] Maybe he was sneaking someone_ in _?_

_SG: [Gasps, snaps her fingers.] Brilliant! Do you really think that's it?_

_NG: [Laughs.] Oh, no, definitely not._

_SG: [Teasingly.] You don't sound sure…_

_NG: [Laughs.] No, I’m sure. That's probably the last possible scenario._

_SG: Well, yeah, that's why this is news at all, really. Louis isn't known for breaking rules, like, at all. When he does, it automatically becomes news._

_NG: Poor guy._

_SG: Oh that’s right,  you're friends with him, right, Grimmy?_

_NG: Yeah, I mean. Well,_ friends _might be generous, but we've hung out before, yeah. Overlapping friend groups._

_SG: So he's really not the rule-breaking type, that's not just an act?_

_NG: No, it's really not._

_SG: No wild stories about the prince letting loose? C’mon Grim, you've got a story for everyone._

_NG: Nope, not this time._

_[Silence, shuffling papers.]_

_SG: [Slightly strained.] Well, that’s all I’ve got._

_[Slightly too-long pause.]_

_NG: [Brightly, sounding a little forced.] Right, back to the fun stuff. On Friday we’ll have a special guest in to promote a surprise single, and maybe to play a quick round of Call or Delete, we'll see!  Clues for figuring out which artist will be posted..._

* * *

 

**@allisonmyaimistrue — 8 minutes ago  
anyone else feel like we’re missing something? **

**_——————————————————-_ **

******@WriterRobWringer — 15 minutes ago**  
**Prince Louis & Prince Harry both present at Earl of**  
**Wessex’s birthday event, both leave early.**

* * *

 

When Louis’ mother was eighteen, she was a waitress at an all-night cafe near Cambridge, and she had dreams of being a nurse, dreams that dwindled every night the tip jar by the till stayed empty.

She paid little to no notice of the people who visited her cafe; mostly because the majority didn't bother to pay her any attention either, noses stuck in their textbooks or heads bent together to gossip about what who did at which party. They'd hold up bank notes between their pointer and middle fingers when they were done with their coffees, not pausing in their conversations long enough to even grace Louis’ mum with the bare minimum of a thank you.

Until a boy came in, at least, and he was windswept and serious and when she brought him a faded menu and a glass of water, he said, “Thank you,” and also, “What's your name?”

It was new; that’s what caught her attention. He was quiet and careful but new in her ordered world.

“Johannah,” she’d answered, then, for some reason, she continued, “My friends call me Jay.”

“Jay,” the boy had repeated, a solemn parrot, “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You as well,” she'd said, reluctantly charmed by his gravitas. “Can I get you anything?”

He’d stared at the menu for a long, long moment, as though the offerings of a basic cafe were beyond his grasp, and then hesitantly asked for, “A cappuccino?”

And so then Jay’s days were filled with harried students getting their caffeine boosts and girls out late after long nights out and young men who were getting degrees in law because that's what their fathers did and their fathers’ fathers and so on and so forth. And, sometimes, a serious-faced boy would come in as well, shake off his umbrella and make quiet conversation that warmed Jay’s day, an eye in the middle of her storm.

He never said his name and Jay never asked, and that was okay because they didn't need it; Jay called her visitor by his order — “Hello, Cappuccino, would you like your usual?” — and he called her Jay as though it was a treat, rolling her name in his mouth like a mint.

Fall passed to winter, to spring, and still he was there, a cappuccino by his arm and a soft smile just for Jay tucked away in the corner of his mouth. Jay loved him in the way she loved movie stars or Mick Jagger — unattainably so, as though even when he was in reach, she couldn’t touch.

She thought maybe he loved her too, for the same — if opposite — reasons. She was too far away from his little world.

And maybe that was okay.

Then, one day, a large, burly man interrupted Jay and her Cappuccino boy and said, “Your Highness, we must be going.”

Jay had laughed; it was such a strange prank, and she hadn't quite understood it, but she was amused anyway. _Your Highness_ — please. Some weird school society thing, maybe.

At least until Cappuccino answered, sounding strained, “Yes, Frank, I'll be with you shortly.”

And so Jay discovered that the serious-faced regular, her Cappuccino boy, was in fact the crown prince.

 _The crown prince._ The next man to sit on the throne, here, in her cafe, on break from his classes at the university. It was how those scientists must have felt when they discovered Pluto, Jay thought to herself, rather wildly; he'd been there all along, she just didn't get a proper look at him until just now.

But it was there, if she'd been looking. The burly man, Frank, she’d seen him before as well, though she realized now that he must have melted in with the rest of the crowd and let the prince take a seat in the corner by himself. And, now that she was looking, she saw the same upturned nose and expressive eyebrows as the Queen, familiar from the pound note and the stamps stuffed in Jay’s purse and the Christmas speech on telly every year. She even saw a signet ring, now that she was looking; subtle and gold but there, the royal crest across the top.

“I-” Cappuccino — the _prince_ — had started, but he didn't seem to have anything else to say. He looked panicked, wringing a napkin between his hands, as though he thought Jay might scream, or faint. She did neither.

“Well,” she’d said. “I'll see you tomorrow, Cappuccino.”

And he had smiled, a soft, private thing, and Jay felt the flip in her stomach that spelled certain trouble.

They were engaged within two years, and Jay was given a crash course in royal etiquette and coached through her dozen first public appearances. Her debut on the prince’s arm was met with crashing waves of conflicting opinions, from those who called her gold digger and raked her over the coals, to those who cried when they ran into her on the street, who coined the term “the people’s princess” to set her apart. For the latter group she was an _inspiration,_ one of _them_ who just got lucky and caught the eye of someone important.

But the others, they challenged the engagement, and old families who'd wanted their daughters to be the next princess cried out in outrage, citing her lack of land, of titles. Surely she tricked the prince, they'd shouted, surely she'd seduced him for his wealth and power!

But that argument didn't hold up for long, because the prince’s love for Jay was so blindingly, overwhelmingly obvious that no one could deny it, not really. Solemn-eyed and sweet, the prince loved her, and she loved him back just as fiercely. hot where he was cold, impulsive where he was steady.

At her wedding, Johannah wore a dress that cost thousands and a veil her mother sewed by hand. She stood in the hallowed hall at Westminster and tried to breathe, history and humility pressing hard on her shoulders. In her vows, she promised to love and to cherish, to have and to hold, and she called the prince Cappuccino until the vicar insisted she use his real name.

Another year later, Louis was born, and the nation rejoiced. The people’s princess might have been non-traditional, but she'd certainly followed through in her royal duties, and now there was a little baby prince to obsess over. And then came Charlotte, and she was just as celebrated, just as adored, and so was Felicite just a few years later.

The old Queen passed and the prince became King, with his wife Johannah a strong presence beside him. A gifted dignitary, Jay navigated the social landscape of nobility as though she actually had been born into it, a natural at easing tension and sensing danger. The nation loved her; the world loved her. She was a common girl who'd caught the eye of a _prince_ — it was the stuff of fairytales. The happy little royal family thrived, adored by their public.

And then the King fell ill.

And then the King passed, too.

Suddenly, Jay was rightful Queen of the nation. A working class girl from Yorkshire, and she'd found herself alone on the throne, her country watching as she held herself together, poised in her grief.

 _How odd,_ came the whispers from the old families, the ones still smarting from the prince’s rejection of their lovely daughters all those years ago, his choosing of Jay the waitress instead of the duchesses and baronesses and noble ladies groomed for him. _How odd that she's not even a noble, she just married into the family, and now she's the most powerful person in the country._

 _How odd,_ they whispered, _that her husband, our beloved King, was in perfectly good health not a year ago, and now, somehow, he's dead._

 _How odd,_ they whispered, and _should we really trust her?_

But Jay ruled carefully, and honestly. She kept her husband’s advisors and she continued his grand plans. Even the old families couldn't grumble too much as the economy started to strengthen, as diplomatic relations hit a high point.  

But then, everything changed again: because Jay fell in love once more.

 _Traitor,_ the old families spat, and they didn't even need to convince the newspapers, the reporters, who loved a scandal more than they loved the people’s princess. _What an insult to the King’s memory,_ they wrote, and _how could we ever trust her?_

Perhaps it was a plot, the papers speculated. Maybe the queen and this- this lowly _lord_ had always been in love, and they’d set hungry eyes on the throne. Maybe the queen had _planted_ herself in that cafe, just to catch the susceptible eyes of their beloved king, God rest his soul. Maybe the children weren’t even _royalty,_ they offered. Maybe the little prince and princesses were just as normal as you or me.

It wasn’t true; none of it. Dan was a minor lord with a small estate near Jay’s family’s home, and they’d stumbled into each other when Jay was there visiting _months_ after her husband’s death. He was a good man, and a good stepfather to her children, and Jay loving him didn’t mean she loved her Cappuccino boy any less.

Another set of twins born, a beautiful little boy and girl, and the world celebrated, but it wasn’t the same. Two precious kids, but neither had ties to the ancient royal line, the one that had guided the country for centuries; the people’s princess was a lovely name, but it didn’t really come with any actual power.

A Queen on a doubted throne, a claim quietly disputed; this is how Louis grew into adulthood, aware of the looming legacy of his parents overhead. There would never be an overthrow, riots in the streets. All that existed were whispers: whispers about whether the royal family was worth the trouble they caused.

 _Aren’t we past the need for monarchs?_ whispered those same old families that, ironically, salivated for the crown and the throne.

And, in all honesty, Louis was never sure he had a good answer for them.  

* * *

 

Louis is halfheartedly watching football on a bright Saturday morning, pretending he can’t hear Liam rattling off the neverending list of things Louis has to do, when his phone buzzes.

_The Largest Idiot In The Known Universe:  
Your next charity event is three weeks from now, correct? _

Louis snorts and types a quick affirmative, wondering how Harry has so much time on his hands and vaguely considering compiling a list of hobbies he could suggest for Harry to try. Embroidery, that’s something that requires long hours away from others, right? Or ghost hunting, so he and Louis would be on opposite sleep schedules. Peruvian stamp collecting, so he’d have to go to, you know. Peru.

One of the windows in Louis’ formal parlor flings open, and a gigantic mess rolls into the middle of the room, arms flailing. Liam, who has black belts in three different martial arts styles and also who Louis is decently sure keeps a knife strapped to his shin, just in case, bursts into action, throwing Louis backwards and pressing a precise, deadly foot to the intruder’s throat.

“Sorry, sorry,” Harry chokes out, his face turning red. “I didn’t think you’d like a knock on the door.”

“How the hell,” Louis murmurs, walking over to the open window and peering out. “We’re on the fourth floor.”

“We haven’t met,” Harry says, still scraping his words out past the foot on his neck. “I’m Harry.”

“I know, I’ve been inviting you to events for months now,” Liam says, finally stepping back, though still watching Harry warily. “Also, you’re the one who keeps sneaking Louis out of events.”

“Did you _climb_ up here?” Louis asks, head still out the window. “How did no one notice that?”

“To be fair, the last couple of times were his idea,” Harry says.

“Harry, I’m going to die if you don’t tell me how you got in,” Louis insists.

“We’re busy,” Liam tells Harry firmly. Louis probably could’ve guessed this would happen before this awkward interaction, but Liam doesn’t particularly like people who make his job harder, and Harry makes his job incredibly difficult.

“I’m sure you are,” Harry says apologetically, and it doesn’t even sound sarcastic. “But I sort of need to borrow Louis.”

“He’s not available,” Liam says.

“Louis, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t desperate,” Harry says. He’s currently trying to look contrite while also keeping Reginald from crawling up his arm, even though Reg is being decently insistent. It’s just making everything worse for him on the Liam front, because Liam has wanted Reg to like him for _ages_ to no avail.

This is dire. Time for Louis to step in.

“Li, I trust you, can you cover the decisions on the auction?” Louis asks.

Liam gives Louis a long, hard look, then sighs. “Fine. Be back by five, you’ve got a meeting with the PR team.”

“You’re the best,” Louis says, then, when Liam leaves the room, turns to Harry. “Alright then, what’s the emergency?”

“I want to go to the Columbia Road flower market,” Harry says."And your next even was too far away for me to wait that long."

“I—” Louis says, then laughs, covering his eyes. “What the hell, Harry.”

“It looks fun!” Harry says. “Flowers!”

“Harry,” Louis says weakly, “I hate to sound less than humble, but we are incredibly famous. We can’t just go waltzing into a flower market.”

“Yes, I have a plan for that,” Harry says. He jumps to his feet and leaves the room; Louis, almost out of fear, follows. Harry slips into Louis’ bedroom (“What are you doing, Harold.” “Shush, let me have my moment.”) and crosses to his walk-in closet.

“I don’t know if I’m impressed or terrified,” Louis says as Harry reaches behind Louis’ garment-bagged suits and produces a small bag.

“Be impressed, I love hearing how amazing I am,” Harry says. He rifles in the bag. “Do you want blue or green?”

“Blue,” Louis answers automatically. “Wait, what is this?”

Harry produces a navy silk scarf and manhandles it onto Louis’ head, fluffing his fringe back and over the headscarf. Next, large aviator sunglasses are shoved onto Louis’ face, and he’s handed a pair of loose, light-washed jeans and a plain white t-shirt.

It’s not a bad disguise, Louis has to admit. His fashion choices have always been about restraint and taste more than anything else, and this is the complete opposite. Louis looks like he should be swilling Starbucks coffee and writing poetry in a moleskin notebook instead of preparing to run the country.

Harry is already in his disguise, though Louis had been preoccupied with Liam almost murdering him to notice. He’s in a windbreaker straight out of the nineties, light blue and purple and gold, and skinny jeans and Converse. His distinctive curls are pulled back in a half-pony, changing the angle of his face and making him sharper, somehow. More narrow and angular.

They might actually be able to pull this off.

“I cannot believe I’m saying this,” Louis sighs, “but let’s go buy some flowers.”

The [market](http://www.columbiaroad.info/) is a crowded hub of color, stalls and storefronts bursting with buckets of bouquets. Louis buys himself and Harry rose teas stirred with homemade honey, and they sip as they follow the crowd, surging forward in small bursts like waves on the shore.

Harry stops to talk to every vendor, Louis is pretty sure, exclaiming over their begonias or tulips or whatever, asking tips on indoor plants and what grows best in direct sunlight. At one stand a bee lands on the sleeve of Harry’s jacket, and Harry carefully transfers the bug back to a peony blossom.

No one seems to have noticed two princes among the mums and hipsters, and Louis feels free to crack jokes without worry and to stare at Harry when he sweet-talks a bee into flying back home.

At the final stand, a man is selling single flowers for a pound; Louis, on a whim, points to a pretty white blossom and says, “I’ll take that one.”

“White jasmine,” the man says wisely, winking. “Good choice.”

On a second whim, Louis stretches up and tucks the flower behind Harry’s ear. Harry opens his mouth as if to say something, closes it, and flushes pink across the bridge of his nose.

* * *

 

They sneak out of a tea party — an actual, real-life, wearing big hats and pastels in a fancy garden _tea party_ — as soon as the opportunity presents itself. (Which, again, is pretty quickly. Because it’s a _tea party.)_

Harry leads Louis to a cinema north of Leicester Square, and he snags a couple of tickets as Louis makes a snack run. It’s already dark in the theatre when they into a back row.

“What are we even watching?” Louis hisses.

“Dunno,” Harry says, shoving a handful of popcorn into his mouth. The question is answered when Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta appear on screen, frolicking on a beach, and Harry laughs.

“Apparently they show old films here from time to time?” Harry guesses.  

Everything is as expected until Frankie Valli starts singing that Grease is the word, and suddenly it’s not normal any longer. [Pink subtitles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehRo1K0o-nw) appear on screen and the audience bursts into scattered song like this is _Rocky Horror_ set at Rydell High.

“What the _hell,”_ Louis says, gaping, and then Harry is pulling him to his feet to spin along, shouting “We take the pressure and we throw it away!”

At the end of the film, Louis finds himself in a conga line with four pensioners, and Harry’s off doing the hand jive with a tiny girl in a poodle skirt.

No one recognizes either of them, and it’s the most fun Louis has had in years.

* * *

 

There’s a fundraiser for education reform and Louis is in attendance along with Niall, sipping champagne (“The _worst,”_ Niall complains.) until it’s late enough that they can leave.

A tap to Louis’ shoulder. “May I have this dance?” Harry asks.

“Not this time,” Louis says, but he grins, and Harry grins back.

“Bunch of fuckin’ weirdos, you two are,” Niall says.

* * *

 

“Please,” Louis coughs, throat dry and eyes heavy. “Who’s going to sign up to be the weed guy for the prince? I send Liam, and I make him wear a wig and go by the name Carlos.”

“He does,” Liam confirms mournfully on Louis’ left side. He takes the joint and puffs, then passes it back along.

“Carlos,” Harry repeats, his already deep, slow voice melted into something even deeper and slower. He starts to laugh, exhaling a stream of smoke as he does.

“Carlos,” Louis agrees, smiling so widely his teeth ache.

* * *

 

It’s a rainy Tuesday, and Louis is signing thank you cards to send to the people who donated money at his last event. _Friends_ is on TV, playing quietly in the background.

“Oh,” Harry says. It’s a testament to how often he shows up that Louis doesn’t even jump anymore, just continues signing his name, over and over. “Is this the one with the Hanukkah armadillo?”

“It’s the _holiday_ armadillo,” Louis refutes. “Have to stay non-denominational.” But he pats the sofa next to him anyway and Harry settles in, eyes glued to the screen.

“I was going to make you take me to see Abbey Road,” Harry says, “but this is better.”

Louis agrees. For the first time in the duration of their acquaintanceship, it doesn’t feel like they’re scrambling to find excuses to interact with each other.

It’s nice.

Weird. But nice.

* * *

 

Louis has three more charity events planned. It’s felt like a marathon, earning and smiling his way back into the public eye, attending party after party after fundraiser after party, but the few events he hosted were even more exhausting.

Only three more left, though, and then he can take a break, at least for a moment. He’ll have his positive headlines, his name back in the minds of the people. He’s pulled focus away from Lottie and given her space to concentrate on her relationship. He’s done almost everything he meant to accomplish, and as soon as he talks to his mum about scrapping the plan for Lottie to be queen, he’ll be set.

Tonight’s charity event (three more to go, only three more to go) is a charity auction, with the big prize being one of Louis’ classic cars he’d bought and restored for kicks. Louis started the whole night off with a speech, and then the lights dimmed and the auctioneer took center stage, and Louis ran out of things to do.

It’s probably the least amount of time he’s spent at one of his own events all season. Twenty minutes, tops, and then he was following Harry into a town car parked a block away.

“Where to, sir?” the driver asks. Harry shrugs magnanimously.

“I always choose. Your turn.”

“You never like my choices.”

“Well, they’re never _good,_ that’s why.”

“You asshole, they’re my choices, that’s the whole _point—”_

A polite cough from the driver’s seat. “Sirs?”

“I don’t care,” Louis says, then sits up straight. “Wait, yes I do. Let’s go to your place.”

“My place?” Harry squeaks. Oh yes, this is a good idea, Louis is very pleased with this. He’ll get so much blackmail material, and he’ll know the address to send pizza with pineapple to when he’s bored. (It’s the ultimate prank, because it’s the high of the pranked person thinking they’re getting unexpected pizza, followed by the disappointment when it’s covered in non-thematic fruit and made inedible. _Perfect_.)

“Yeah,” Louis says, smiling innocently. “You have to have a place in the city, right? Since you’re in my business at approximately all hours of the day.”  
  
“I have a flat here, yes—”

“A-ha! Driver,” Louis calls. Stops. “I’m sorry, my man, that’s rude, what’s your name?”

The driver’s eyes look like they’re twinkling in the rearview mirror. “Jared.”

“Hello Jared. I’m currently the second most powerful person in this country, could you drive us to Harry’s flat, please? Thank you.”

“It’s not my fault I was born second,” Harry grumbles.

“Still my country, still my rules,” Louis says. “Now, let’s talk about all the things you’re going to try to hide when I’m not looking. We can start with the Twilight books, which I know you own.”

“Those books were a cultural phenomenon!” Harry says hotly.

Louis grins.

It’s nearly twenty minutes later that the car rolls smoothly to a stop outside a nice townhome in Kensington. The walls are whitewashed and the tiny lawn is pristine, matching the rest of the street.

“This is where you live?” Louis asks, sliding out of the car and staring up at the place.

“Part time,” Harry says. “I’m technically the ambassador to England, so when I travel for diplomatic reasons, I have a place to stay.”

“Are you going to do that thing where you ask for a ten second head start and runs inside to shove everything in a closet?” Louis asks, grinning widely. “Because, fair warning, I’m going to look in all of your closets, so.”

“No, just—” Harry grimaces. “Come on.”

There’s a key, a second key, and a small, discrete box that Harry types a passcode into, and then they’re in. Harry flicks a switch and the room floods with light.

“Oh,” Louis says, because the only other thing he can think to say is _it looks like you in here._

The space is minimal but detailed, clean black and white lines with subtle swipes of color; hot pink, turquoise, gold. A small square of wall is a color wheel of Polaroid pictures, arranged in a rainbow. There’s a copy of _Maurice_ on a side table, a dried pressed white flower acting as the bookmark.

Above the simple cut-out fireplace are three paintings: one is a [still life](https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/francis-cbell-boileau-cadell-1883-1937-still-l-1075-c-rimad8fu7t) of a vase of flowers, muted pinks and purples, a dark desk and a gold-rimmed teacup.

The middle painting is a white square. “You bought it,” Louis says dumbly.

“I like keeping things when they have memories attached,” Harry agrees quietly.

The last painting is— it’s Louis’.

A terrible painting of a blobby bird hanging over the head of a walrus-cat, next to a small person-shaped dog. Hanging next to two actual works of art, as though it belongs there.

And it doesn’t even look out of place.

“Harry,” Louis says.

When he turns, he sees Harry lingering in the doorway. He looks nervous, almost, like Louis might march over and take back his terrible painting, and the white square one next to it. Like he’ll be angry that Harry is collecting little pieces of their strange acquaintanceship.

“I—” _don’t understand you—_ “want to kiss you.” It’s not what Louis meant to say, but it’s out there anyway, and he doesn’t want it back. Wants Harry to have it, wishes he could trap the words in a frame, in a glass jar like a firefly, and keep them forever.

“Thank god,” Harry says, “because I always want to kiss you.”

When they kiss it’s like they’re back in that little room at that random summit, Louis thirteen and Harry eleven. Like this is the future that should’ve been if Louis had said yes to that first dance.

There’s too much kissing for Louis to focus on, so he can’t wonder what that means.

Harry’s mouth is warm and tastes like honey. His hands are too big on Louis’ face, making him feel small and caught, but it’s not such a bad feeling. It’s not gentle, though; Louis doesn’t know who does what first but somehow they’re stumbling back against the entryway wall, grappling for elbows and waists and the line of buttons up the front of Harry’s shirt.

“I need,” Harry says, and doesn’t seem to have anything to follow that up with; Louis concurs, though. He _needs,_ a vague, wild feeling in his gut.

At some point, there’s a bed. Louis doesn’t know how they got there, couldn’t have drawn a map from Harry’s living room to his bedroom, but they’re there and Louis wants to take advantage of that lucky little fact.

“Hurry,” Harry says nonsensically, because he’s the one scrambling for his own buttons, baring his chest. Louis helps pull the silk over his head and catches his hand on the back of Harry’s neck as he does, stilling him. He hooks a finger in the rubber band keeping Harry’s hair back in a bun, and pulls it, slowly, smoothly, out of Harry’s hair, letting his curls run riot over his shoulders. Harry’s lips part. “I— yeah,” he says hoarsely, as though giving Louis permission after it had already been done. “Yeah.”

Louis’ shoes land next to the bed in a disordered thunk, and his jacket follows. He’s wearing braces tonight and Harry groans at the sight of them.

“Seriously?” he asks, and Louis thinks he’s frustrated by an additional step between right now and the moment they’re both naked until his face flushes pink, his lip caught between his teeth.

“Really?” Louis laughs breathlessly. He slides the braces down to hang by his hips and yanks his shirt over his head, leaving the braces and trousers on. “The braces are doing it for you?”

 _“You’re_ doing it for me, you asshole,” Harry says. “Now take off your stupid hot grandpa clothes.”

Louis grins and unzips, kicking his trousers to the foot of the bed. He shoves Harry back with a hand to his sternum. “Stay,” he says, and doesn’t expect the way Harry’s breath catches.

Louis unbuttons Harry’s trousers and grabs them by the hips, letting himself run his hands along newly bared skin as he pushes the fabric down and out of the way. He leans down and sucks a bruise at the topmost edge of one of Harry’s laurel tattoos, a blast of dark ink on Harry’s otherwise peach-pink skin. Harry’s leg kicks up and he shifts restlessly. Louis looks up, teeth still working at Harry’s sensitives skin, and catches Harry’s eye, slowly shaking his head. Harry holds himself still after that, except the flex of his fingers in the duvet.

“Louis,” Harry chokes out, “Louis, you gotta—”

“I want to fuck you,” Louis says, and Harry tosses his head back. “Can I?”

“Hell yeah,” Harry says. He’s still perfectly still, just where Louis told him to stay, but he nods toward the bedside table. “Lube and condoms.”

“Turn over,” Louis says, and Harry shifts eagerly as Louis knees over to the table, pulling out a bottle and the whole box of condoms.

“Feeling confident?” Harry smirks, peering over his shoulder. In answer, Louis yanks his own briefs down and shucks them, enjoying the way Harry swallows heavily.

“Yes,” he says belatedly, waiting for Harry to look up at him, his eyes blown wide.

Louis tucks his thumbs under the waistband of Harry’s pants and tugs them down, leaving little pink marks in a line along soft skin. Harry muffles a noise into the pillow and Louis bites a little harder.

“You don’t have roommates do you?” he asks. “Close neighbors? A maid?”

“N-no,” Harry shudders out, shivering.

“Then quit hiding your face, I want to hear you.”

Harry drops his face back into the pillow but angles when Louis starts back up, quiet noises escaping into the room. Louis presses one slick finger in and Harry arches, mouth falling open.

“Oh, fucking— _fuck,”_ Harry grits. “More.”

“You’ll get more when I give you more,” Louis says absently. He angles his finger up; when he finds the spot that makes Harry’s back contort and his hand fly up to smack the wall, he slips a second finger in next to the first. Works it slowly in until both fingers are fully seated, Harry’s skin hot and tight around his fingers.

“Fuck me,” Harry gasps. “Fuck me fuck me _fuck m—”_

Louis adds a third finger, and he’s even slower about it this time. Excruciatingly glacial touches, slides of slick fingers. He waits until Harry is twisting, panting with it, before he even reaches for a condom.

He’s so hard he has to squeeze the base of his dick when he rolls the rubber on, but it’s almost muted; his focus is entirely on Harry and the way he’s rocking back and forth a little like he’s already being fucked.

The slide in is like a revelation, and Louis finds the answer to everything in the way his hips cradle Harry’s ass. Harry shifts one leg forward a little and Louis goes even _deeper_ — it’s impossible and also somehow the most necessary thing in the world.

“Fuck,” Harry bites out, kneading at the pillow with a white-knuckled hand.

“I’m trying,” Louis says, and Harry’s laugh is breathy, punched out when Louis pulls out and thrusts back in.

They move together in that bed like they never have in their real lives: in sync, pushing and pulling in equal measure. Louis gives and Harry takes, but it’s the other way too, because Harry shifts his hips back when he wants more and Louis lets him have what he wants. Push, pull, and sweat-slick skin that eases the glide.

“I’m— shhhit, I’m—” Harry says. Louis reaches around and jerks Harry quickly; it’s not three or four strokes before Harry is coming, a long, low moan shaking its way out of him.

It’s like with that sound, the feeling of hot come on his hand, Louis realizes just how much he’s aching. He shifts Harry’s ass higher so he can sit fully up on his knees, his breath stuttering at the way Harry slides perfectly into position, loose and pliable.

“Oh,” Louis gasps. “Oh— oh fuck.”

Harry hums, his cheek pressed to the mattress. It’s overwhelming, seeing the effect each little movement has on him; the way his muscles jump, overstimulated, when Louis angles a particular way. The way his hair clings to his neck, his back, Louis’ fingers when he threads them through the curls. The way a tiny noise escapes him when Louis bends and kisses his back, helpless to the impulse to put his mouth on him in some way.

Louis comes when Harry reaches back and hooks a hand around his hip, urging him on. It’s like letting go and falling into thin air, the swoop of his stomach and the rush of endorphins.

He collapses next to Harry, sweaty and sated and so, ridiculously happy that he laughs out loud. Harry, after a moment, laughs too.

“That was,” Louis says. “Unexpected.”

Harry grins sleepily, a flash of teeth. “Stupid,”  he corrects.

Louis chuckles again. “That too.”

Somewhere in the flat, a clock ticks. But everything else, the whole world and the man next to him, everything else is quiet.

* * *

 

They wake sometime when the sun is attempting to push its way back into the sky, pink tendrils reaching out from the horizon. Louis startles awake with a mouth on his cock and returns the favor once he’s caught his breath, shouldering his way between Harry’s legs and taking his time in revenge. When Harry’s legs start shaking from his third orgasm delay, Louis takes pity on him and lets him come, collecting the shouts he directs towards the ceiling like payment for his hard work.

After that, they slump together and talk about stupid things. About Reginald and how he has an ear infection, so he keeps falling off of flat surfaces because his balance is fucked. About Niall and his latest hookup, a guy from back in Ireland who looks big enough to bench press Niall but treats him like spun sugar. About the books Harry’s been reading, about the shows they’ve been working their way through on Netflix.

At one point, somewhere around four-thirty in the morning, orange cuts its way across the bed, a surprise sunrise. Harry stands, stretching out long, lithe limbs and wiping his hair back off his face. He digs for a moment and emerges with a Polaroid camera. “You mind?” he asks, and Louis snorts but waves his hand; this is the first time in ten years Louis isn’t thinking _try anything and my lawyers will make you rue the day you were born,_ and he knows Harry won’t do anything with the picture except hang it somewhere only he’ll see.

The camera whirs and shoots out a black square, and when it slowly lightens into a picture Harry shows it to Louis. It’s a torso shot, orange and pink and gold turning his skin into an Impressionist painting. His collarbones cast shadows, his hand is curled on his chest.

It’s nice. Louis almost wants it for himself.

Harry puts the camera aside and they keep talking, but it’s like a membrane broke and real conversations can start to slip in. Harry talks about his sister, how he always wished he had more of her poise but she always wished she had some of his impulsivity. Louis talks about Lottie and Tommy, that Tommy cooked for Lottie a few days ago and Lottie was so smitten that she couldn’t stop smiling even when Louis pointed it out. They talk about Louis’ dad, gone for ten years now, and Harry’s dad, gone for even longer. They talk about the way they both have nightmares about the sound of camera shutters from time to time, the way their stomachs swoop in panic every time they hear, _Your Highness, I’m with The Sun, do you have a comment on…_

“I was jealous of the way you got to come out,” Louis says. It’s midmorning, and they’re eating few-days-old scones in bed because they don’t want to put clothes on and leave. Harry makes a muffled inquiring noise, and Louis keeps going. “You seemed to have all the power. It was a _statement._ I didn’t say anything.” He snorts. _“Still_ haven’t said anything, technically. The PR team confirmed for me, but I’ve never spoken about it.”

Harry’s quiet for a long moment. It’s okay, because that’s how the morning has gone, really; quiet interspersed with soft, wandering comments. Harry’s head is resting on Louis’ stomach, and he stares up at the ceiling.

But then: “I came out because of you,” he says.

“What?” Louis asks. His mind feels fuzzy because he hasn’t really completely woken up, but that did the trick. “Harry, what?”

“I said, I came out because of you,” Harry says. “A lot of people did, actually, I don’t know if you knew.”

“No, I—” Louis had been completely kept away from the media in the firestorm that followed his first kiss landing in the papers.

“It was because you just went about your life, like it was no big deal,” Harry keeps going. He’s got one arm stretched over his head, the back of one knuckle brushing Louis’ ribs. “Because it _isn’t_ a big deal, or it shouldn’t have been. And that made me realize that if you could kiss boys and be a prince, so could I.”

“That’s— Harry,” Louis says desperately. He hasn’t finished a sentence since Harry started talking. It’s strange to be hearing something that revises everything he thought he knew while lying in bed with a naked person he used to hate. He feels like he should be sitting up for this, but he doesn’t want to dislodge Harry. He’ll pace about it later.

“Yeah,” Harry laughs. “Can you imagine if people knew that? They’d already freak if they heard about,” he waves his hand at himself and Louis. “I can’t imagine the uproar if they heard my gay origin story.”

“Good thing they won’t, then,” Louis laughs, still a little out of breath. It takes him a moment to realize Harry hasn’t said anything yet, so he tugs at one of Harry’s curls. “Right?” he asks. “This is just for us.”

“Yeah,” Harry answers after a pause. “Of course.”

Relief floods through Louis, because for a moment he thought he’d ruined it. “I just mean, I can’t be in a relationship with _any_ guy, not with the current political climate. People might applaud the progressiveness, but they wouldn’t trust me with the crown.”

“Of course,” Harry says again. He stops tracing the edge of Louis’ ribs and sits up. “Want another scone?”

He leaves the room before Louis has a chance to answer.

* * *

 

“You _slept with him?”_ Niall shrieks. Louis is very glad his suite of rooms is soundproofed by heavy doors and old carpets, otherwise someone walking by might get the wrong impression.

“I—” Louis stops, and realizes once the word is out that no excuse would actually excuse him. He’s hated Harry for years; he can’t really blame Niall for being confused. “Yeah.”

“What the ever-loving _fuck,”_ Niall says.

Louis flops backwards, pulling a throw pillow over his face. “I don’t _know,_ okay? It wasn’t an active decision. He was there, he looks like _that,_ I wanted it to happen. No cognitive activity involved at all.”

“I’ll say,” Niall says. “You just let Lottie off the hook for being queen so that she could be in a relationship no one would approve of. And then you go and land yourself into a relationship no one will approve of.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Louis says. “This is not— this isn’t a _relationship._ We barely _like_ each other.”

“You’ve been going on dates for _months!”_ Niall says, looking bewildered. “You bought him flowers!”

 _“A_ flower. Singular.”

“You went dancing!”

“He took me just to prove a point!”

“He hangs out here all the time, he took you to see a film, he spends tons of time planning activities for you to do,” Niall says, ticking the reasons down on his fingers.

“Don’t, no,” Louis says. “You’re twisting things.”

“And _you’re_ being willfully obtuse,” Niall shoots back.

“He’s not my boyfriend, he’s just—” Louis says, but he doesn’t have a word to finish that sentence. He’s just— he’s Harry. That infuriating presence in his life since they were kids, the one that grew into the prince Louis could never be — open and wild, sweet and sharp. He could be imperfect, and Louis hated him for that. _Hates_ him— hates him for that.

No, _hated._ Maybe he doesn’t anymore.

But for a long time he did, and just because they’ve used each other in a few different ways means that anything will change.

Louis will be King someday and Harry will go on being the spare royal, the one that can be reckless and devil-may-care, the one free to live his own life. Louis wants that for him, if nothing else.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Louis repeats. “And he never will be.”

* * *

 

At age ten, Louis spent an afternoon watching Disney movies with his sisters. He tried not to pay attention; he had _important_ things to do, like _reading_ and also _writing,_ and was far too busy to be watching cartoons. He told himself that, over and over and over.

He wasn’t successful. Wide-eyed and breathless, he watched for hours as strong girls found their voices and their princes, over and over again. And suddenly, he knew.  It hit him out of nowhere, a shot of truth to the heart.

At the end of _Snow White,_ Louis danced out of the room and ran through the halls of the palace until he came across his parents sitting together on a sofa, holding hands as they each read a different newspaper.

“Louis!” said his mother, startled. “Goodness, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” he said, breathing hard from his sprint across the building.

“Take a breath, you’re going to get hiccups,” his father said, turning to the financial pages in the Guardian.

“I won’t,” promised Louis. “I came to tell you—”

“Do you need a drink?” his mum fussed.

“No, thank you!” Louis said loudly. This was _important,_ and they wouldn’t _listen._ In a rush, he announced, “When I get older, I’m going to be the real life Prince Charming.”

For a moment, it was silent. Louis was worried, but, ultimately, they took it well.

His father smiled and nodded, saying, “That’s an excellent plan, son.”

His mother asked, “Why do you have to wait until you’re older? Why not start right now?”

And Louis had replied, “Because I can’t marry a princess _yet,_ Mum!” and then ran away before he heard her reply of _oh, of course, how silly of me._

While it had been a hasty decision to announce his plan to become Prince Charming, it wasn’t exactly inaccurate. Louis wanted the whole thing: the long courtship with a sweet stranger, the showering of a significant other with gifts and precious things just because, the elaborate, massive wedding. He wanted to ride off into the sunset in the white carriage with the white horses, waving out the window at all the people who had helped him find love, his princess’ hand clasped tightly in his own.

It took a few years before he realized that one pertinent detail wasn’t actually what he really wanted.

Louis’ grandmum died and his father became king, and certain things he’d thought of as steady and unending suddenly ended. His father, already busy and a little absent by necessity, became like a royal equivalent of a blue moon, appearing sporadically and disappearing quickly. His mum, too, grew busier, though social constraints of the Queen position meant that she had to be seen giving her children attention or she’d be raked over the coals, so he still spent time with her often. It was just that now, their quality time was also attended by dudes with cameras.

Other things changed as well. In school, while studying mythology and history, a classmate joked about Louis being the next Oedipus. They got into a scuffle, because the boy was saying things about Louis’ mum that wouldn’t stand, but it wasn’t until later that he realized the boy might’ve also been talking about Louis’ short distance to the throne with only his parents standing in his way.

It was a strange realization. He had always been the crown prince, but now that burden seemed heavier. Like an invisible crown already sat on his head to prepare him for the weight of the real thing.

And as though that wasn’t enough, Louis found himself watching his classmates with a new sense of awareness that he didn’t understand. He couldn’t figure out how Niall had enough time to catalogue all of the Swedish ambassador’s daughter’s different lip gloss shades when there were so many boys around to watch instead. People Louis had never noticed before now caught and held his attention in fascinating new ways; like the tall redhead boy who had the most interesting freckles or Louis’ friend Timothy and the way he bit his lip before he spoke.

Once, while playing football with a few lads, Louis thought to himself, _I never noticed just how fit Johnny is,_ and then, a moment later, _Oh._

Louis told Niall that he thought he might be gay when they were fifteen. Niall said, “Cool. Guys are fuckin’ awesome.” Then he stopped, and tilted his head not unlike a contemplative golden retriever. “Girls are pretty fuckin’ awesome too, though.”

“Whatever you say, lad,” Louis said, clapping him on the shoulder, and that was that.

And so Louis, third in line to the throne, future leader of the nation, began to stretch his metaphorical legs. Timidly so, and carefully so, but he still stretched. Letting himself notice guys who got taller over the summer hols. Boys who had nice hands. Tan lines. _Dimples._ Qualities girls can also have, but that weren’t nearly as interesting to Louis as when they were had by boys.

Louis felt like any other not-straight boy, on the cusp of great discovery, scared about the next step. But he _wasn’t_ any other non-straight boy. He couldn’t just find someone nice to take on a date and hope for the best; no, he had to keep his eyes averted and his feelings locked under five layers of royal etiquette. He had Niall to vent to and a world of expectations on his shoulders, and a veritable army of cameras always watching him to keep him in line.

Well. _Almost_ always watching.  

On Louis’ sixteenth birthday, there was a party. It was a whole affair, with the bowties and stiff suits and shaking hand after hand, thanking powerful people for coming to be seen celebrating his first fifteen years of life. There was a string quartet and a refined, but subdued, strawberry torte instead of a classic birthday cake. There was tasteful wine for the adults, too, but it didn’t last long.

“C’mon, Your Highness,” cajoled Victoria, a princess from Sweden.

“Yeah, Lewis,” said Johnny from boarding school. “It’s your party, right?”

Louis sent Niall a look, and Niall just shrugged, as if to say, _your call, mate._

So Louis said, “Alright, then.”

Three bottles of wine were stolen and snuck out by the teenagers, and they barricaded themselves in Louis’ suites. They popped the cork out of the bottles and sloshed rich red wine into glasses and on the floor, and played stupid drinking games they made up on the spot, like _drink if you hate maths_ and _take a shot if you’re wearing red or blue or green or black or clothes at all._

In the haze of the evening, one thing was constant. A boy named Jeremy sat next to Louis all night, refilling his glass when it emptied and sending him small, secret smiles. Jeremy was from Louis and Niall’s school as well, a baron’s son who played guitar and sang in the talent show every year; Louis didn’t know if Jeremy’s looks meant what he hoped they meant, but it _felt_ like they did. Louis felt warm all over even though winter wind battered against his windows, and at one point when his pinky brushed Jeremy’s he thought he might just combust completely.

“I’ve never been on a balcony before,” said Jeremy, who was clearly lying because they had astronomy classes together at school, and the telescope bay was a balcony. But still Louis led him outside, their hands carefully curled together.

For a moment, Louis felt like a normal kid, whose choices affected only him and the boy he wanted to snog. He felt a thousand feet tall and also about the size of a mouse, invincible and terrified, scared and fearless.

He leaned forward, pressed his lips to Jeremy’s.

For a second, the whole world was Louis and Jeremy and the small, warm space between their bodies. But Louis had spent his entire life in the presence of cameras, and the moment he heard the rapid-fire clacking of plastic shutters he stumbled back, covering his mouth as if to hide the evidence.

But it was too late; Louis’ first kiss ended up on the front page of every paper in the land. If he hadn’t been sure that he was gay before that kiss, he was sure now, and so was the whole rest of the world.

His parents took it really well, which was a relief; his mum cried and hugged him for long minutes and his dad said only, “Do what makes you happy, son.” They couldn’t hide Louis from the media storm he caused, though, or the strain it caused them. Louis’ dad had to take an immediate, firm, _vocal_ stand in support of gay rights, so as to prove that Louis wasn’t going to be ostracized and cast out. Jay had to schedule family days out in public to show that Louis was still loved by his family and that no one suddenly refused to be in his presence with the revelation of this new part of him.

It was strange and scary and infuriating, because that random man with a camera took Louis’ greatest secret and sold it to the world when it wasn’t his to give in the first place. Louis’ life flipped entirely in the space of a few moments, and he was left playing catch-up.

In the midst of Louis’ life twisting into a new shape, he was hit with another bomb that blew him into new pieces: his dad fell ill, and, quietly, he died.

At the funeral, Louis held the hands of Lottie and his mum, the newly crowned Queen, and couldn’t help but wonder if the stress he caused had led to _this._

He couldn’t help but think it had.

He couldn’t help but blame himself.

His mum disappeared into her new job and it fell to Louis to pick up the girls and himself, to carry them through the grief and the fear. He had to be strong, even though he didn’t feel like it; he had to be okay, even if he wasn’t.

He was seventeen, and in one short year his life had become unrecognizable. Something had to crack, to give, and he was pretty sure it was going to be him.

So he went to his mother, and he said, “I’m not the best one for the job.” And then, when she didn’t answer, when she only watched him with careful, sad eyes, he insisted, “Lottie should be the one on the throne.”

Finally, his mother spoke. “Because she’s a better fit?” she asked. “Or because you don’t think you are?”

Both, it was both. Louis was Sisyphus and he could only push the world so far before it rolled back over him, and each time it was harder to get up and start over. Lottie, even as young as she was, didn’t feel that weight the same way. She could lead in a way that wasn’t governed by fear or worry.

“I can’t do it, Mum,” Louis whispered, and Jay came around her ancient desk and pulled him close, like they weren’t Queen and Crown Prince anymore but just any mother and her son, scared and alone.

“If this is what you want,” she whispered, “We will make it work.”

The plan wouldn’t go into place until Lottie was twenty, “Just in case,” Jay said, and wouldn’t elaborate when Louis asked.

Ten years. Ten years, and Louis would be free to step away for good, letting better people take his place. Ten years, and Louis wouldn’t have to worry that if he snogged someone, it would be the downfall of his entire family and the political system they rest on.

Ten years.

For ten years, Louis slowly extricated himself from the trappings of royalty. Let his sisters shine and draw attention, let his voice be diminished. It was for the best.

Ten years later, Lottie fell in love, and Louis’ life twisted again.

* * *

Ten years later, maybe Louis thought this new shape his life had taken wasn’t so bad.

Different. But not so bad.

* * *

 

Louis’ second to last charity event is a cocktail reception in the Rose Garden at Hyde Park. It’s Liam’s best work so far, delicate lights threaded through the roses, candles floating the water under the centerpiece statue, gentle music filling the air.

Louis wants to appreciate this one. He _does._

But.

“Fuck,” Harry whispers, arms wrapped around Louis’ shoulders and keeping him impossibly close. Brambles pick at their clothes, holding them captive, but Louis can’t care.

“Shut up,” he hisses, then presses a hard kiss to Harry’s mouth to do the job for him. Harry makes a wild, low noise against Louis’ mouth and his hands scrabble against Louis’ shoulders. The shadowy corner they found keeps them hidden from partygoers but doesn’t stop the sounds, so Louis kisses Harry harder in the hopes it’ll shock him into silence.

“You are so,” he says, mouth tingling in the bare seconds between kisses, “ _infuriating.”_

 _“Me?”_ Harry asks. His hand is hot under Louis’ jacket, wide and heavy. “You were _licking_ a _knife,_ Louis. You were wearing _those_ trousers and _licking a knife,_ I had to do something!”

Louis bites his retort into the hot skin of Harry’s throat right above his collar. “You went from five buttons on your shirt to two, that’s not playing fair.”

“Nothing’s fair in—” Harry stops, rolling his head to the side with a gasp. “Anyway,” he says on a quiet, huffed laugh, “you can make it up to me.”

Lous doesn’t ask _how?_ because he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care about anything but the way Harry feels and the way the sky stretches out overhead like it’s helping them keep their secret.

Harry tells him anyway. “Dance with me,” he says, pulling back to look Louis in the eye. A hint of a smile dances around the corner of his mouth; he could be joking. It doesn’t look like he’s joking.

Louis presses their mouths together instead of listing all the reasons they can’t.

* * *

**@allisonmyaimistrue — 4 minutes ago  
…… seriously. are we just ignoring this? does the fourth wall exist again? **

**_________________________________ **

******@WriterRobWringer — 6 minutes ago**  
**Princes leave event early again, no comment**  
**from either PR rep.**

* * *

 

“We’ve got to quit meeting like this,” Louis gasps as Harry drops to his knees, the bathroom stall wall cold against his back. The noises outside the door are muffled, quiet clinking of glass and indistinct conversation. Louis has a speech to give in ten minutes; he’s going to be flushed and sweaty in the pictures, but hopefully people will write it off to nerves.

“We could,” Harry says. “But that’s not as much fun.”

When they finish — Louis in Harry’s mouth, Harry in his own trousers, rubbing against Louis’ hipbone with his face buried in Louis’ neck — Harry sends Louis a lazy, slow smile and says, _“Now_ will you dance with me?”

Louis just laughs, checks that the coast is clear, and leaves the bathroom first before anyone notices how long he’s been missing.

* * *

 

_TRUE LOVE’S KISS? Prince Harry spotted with love bite — and won’t share details!  
By SHOWBIZ EDITOR Rob Wringer _

_PRINCE HARRY was seen out with friends Tuesday night at the glamorous Phoenix Lounge, a hotspot for the rich and famous. Harry and his friends were at the bar until about two AM, and were spotted leaving by photographers._

_See Harry’s famous ex-boyfriends here, and what they’re doing now_

_Sharp-eyed fans noticed in a few pictures that Harry seemed to be sporting a new accessory — a love bite! When asked to comment, Harry said only, “I’d like to keep my business private, thank you.”_

_Harry wore a custom Gucci floral suit, and seemed to be intoxicated when he left accompanied by five friends. One was heard joking with the prince, saying, “F*** the prince, he’s not that great.”_

_No word on Harry’s new secret boyfriend’s identity, but we’ve listed some guesses below. Leave a comment if you know someone else the dishy prince could be dating!_

* * *

It comes to a head, dramatically and appropriately enough, in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Louis is in his rooms at the palace, listlessly flipping through a book he wanted to read an hour ago, but that he can’t seem to focus on now. The air is heavy and oppressive, and Louis wants to strip down and wallow in it.

There’s a knock on the door and Louis, glad for the distraction, flings his book aside. When he opens the door, he frowns when he sees Harry there, his curls dripping onto his sheer shirt and turning it fully transparent, his chest heaving like he ran here from his own flat.

“Harry,” Louis says, confused. “Why’d you knock?”

“Felt right,” Harry says, pushing past Louis and striding to the middle of the room. He bends to scratch under Reg’s chin and pivots to face Louis. “So you meant it, then.”

“Meant what?” Louis asks, bewildered.

“We aren’t in a relationship,” Harry says. “You drag me into bathrooms and hallways for sex, you let me take you on dates, you kiss me like it means something, but you won’t tell anyone you’re dating me.”

“I can’t,” Louis says automatically. Harry bristles visibly and Louis tries again. “That’s not a write-off, that’s really all it is. I _can’t,_ I’m—”

“Going to be king someday,” Harry finishes. “Yeah, I’ve heard.”

“I didn’t ask for it, but it’s what I’ve got,” Louis says. “And it means I can’t do certain things.”

“Like be happy?” Harry asks. His fists keep clenching and unclenching. “In order to be a decent ruler, you have to be miserable.”

“I’m not miserable,” Louis refutes.

“You’re not _yourself,”_ Harry shouts. “Outside this room, outside of my flat or the fucking dance floor at a club, you play like you’re someone different. And I _hate_ that guy!”

“You hate me,” Louis echoes, hollow.

“No, I—” Harry stops, shoving a hand in his hair like it’s an anchor. “Well, maybe I used to. When we were kids. And I thought I hated you as an adult, too, because you were boring, and scared, and stuck in a rut. But that’s not you. That’s the guy you pretend to be when everyone is looking at you.”

“Maybe that is me!” Louis answers, his temper shading his vision a little red. “Maybe I _am_ boring, and scared, and stuck.”

“The real you danced with me at a sing-along screening of _Grease,”_ Harry says. Suddenly, he’s smaller, like the fight left him all in a whoosh and fled to Louis instead. “The real you teases me when I’m being an asshole and doesn’t let me get away with any bullshit.” He takes three long steps closer to Louis, lowering his voice even more. “The real you kisses me like he doesn’t care who’s watching.”

“I told you,” Louis answers, just as quietly. “I told you I couldn’t.”

“You could,” Harry says. “You’re just too selfish to try.”

“I’m trying to _not_ be selfish,” Louis says. “I’m trying to do what’s best.”

“And I hope someday that’s enough for you,” Harry says. “Because I can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?” Louis asks, mouth dry. The floor fell away the moment Harry stormed in, but it’s back now and it’s where his stomach has fallen; his heart is beating in his toes, and low in his lungs where he’s starting to ache.

Harry just shakes his head. “I thought it would be enough,” he says. “I thought it would be okay, because I’ve done casual before. But I need more than that from you.” He bites his lip, swallows. “You mean too much.” He takes a step around Louis, pauses like he might lean in, a goodbye kiss, but stops himself just in time. Instead, he halts by the door, leaving something on a table before he goes.

When the door swings shut behind Harry, Louis doesn’t want to see what he left. If he avoids it, maybe this whole day will just disappear. Maybe everything resets if he doesn’t look at—

It’s the Polaroid. The one of Louis’ naked chest and stomach with the sunrise spilling across him. He didn’t notice before, but he can see one of Harry’s hands in the corner of the picture, resting on Louis’ thigh.

Reginald makes a pathetic, whimpering sound. “Yeah, bud,” Louis mumbles. “Me too.”

* * *

 

**@kimmyandthejets — 14 minutes ago  
so louis hasn’t been seen in two weeks, which is the longest he’s been MIA since june, and harry has been out with friends every night **

**@kimmyandthejets — 13 minutes ago  
i mean i’m not saying lover’s spat, but…… **

**@SympathyForTheDevin — 10 minutes ago  
@kimmyandthejets you can say lover’s spat. did you see this pic of harry? his eyes are even red from crying **

**@PrinceStylinson — 7 minutes ago  
@kimmyandthejets @SympthyForTheDevin :( **

* * *

 

“Mum,” Louis calls, knocking quietly on the old wood of Jay’s office door. “Are you busy?”

“Come in,” she says, and when Louis pushes the door open she looks up from a stack of papers, reading glasses low on her nose. “Thank god, a friendly face,” she smiles.

“Anything I can help with?” Louis offers, gesturing to the four separate piles of forms and folders. Jay takes off her glasses and pinches at the bridge of her nose, yawning.

“No, baby, but thank you,” she says. After a moment she sets her glasses aside, and crosses one leg over the other. She tilts her head and surveys Louis for what feels like a short eternity. “Last time you had that look on your face, you asked me to take away your birthright.”

“Ah,” Louis chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck. “Funny you should mention that.” He takes a deep breath and tries to look his mother right in the eye. “Remember that clause you included about revoking what we’d agreed on? Can we start that process?”

As he’d spoken, a small smile had appeared on his mum’s face, tucked in the corner of her mouth like a secret. Instead of answering, she leans down and unlocks a bottom drawer. She pulls out a thin folder and holds it against her knee.

“This is the agreement we made,” she says, tapping at the folder. “Are you sure you want to change it?”

Another deep breath. “Yeah, I’m sure.” He scrubs at his arm. “It wasn’t fair to ask Lottie to take my responsibility.”

Jay’s smile widens. She shifts the folder to her other hand and opens it.

It’s empty.

“I never drew up any agreement, baby,” she says. “I knew you’d never be able to let someone else carry your burdens.”

“God,” Louis laughs, dropping his head into his hands. “I can’t believe how much stress a nonexistent document has caused me.”

Jay’s smile softens. “I would have done this for you if I’d have thought it was in your best interest,” she says. “But you’ve always been the right one. You practically raised your sisters, you were my closest friend in the hardest time of my life. I trust you with my country above anyone else.”

Louis lets out a breath he feels like he’s been holding for a decade. “Thank you, Mum.”

“Now,” Jay says, “who’s the guy?”

“I— uh.” Louis feels his face flame. “There’s… there’s not a guy.”

“I know you,” Jay says, “and I know what you look like when you fall in love and feel like you can’t act on it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Louis says decisively, slapping his hands on his knees, preparing to stand. “Honestly, Mum, thank you, I’ll go tell Lottie it’s—“

“Sit. Down,” Jay says. Louis sits. “Start over. Why doesn’t it matter?”

“I can’t be a king who loves a man,” Louis explains. “Mum, the people almost rioted over you, and you’re perfect for the job. They’d never accept me.”

“Who cares?”

Louis feels his jaw drop. “Uh, what?”

“Who cares,” Jay repeats, leaning forward. “Something I learned long ago is that you will never be able to please everyone, so you should only worry about pleasing yourself and the people you love.” She takes Louis’ hand, smiling. “You’re the center of my world, love, but even you aren’t powerful enough to bring down a thousand-year system of government.”

“Well, it doesn’t even matter,” Louis says, slumping backwards. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“He has seemed sad in pictures lately,” Jay agrees. It takes Louis a moment, but when it strikes him, he looks up, wide-eyed.

“You knew,” he accuses.

“I knew,” she shrugs, grinning. “So what happened?”

“I fucked up,” Louis admits. “And I don’t think he’ll even talk to me anymore.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, tapping her lip. “I’m sure there’s something we can do.”

* * *

 

It’s the final charity event. One more royal ball, the last of the season.

Everyone is here. The rich, the famous, the royal, the celebrated. Reginald is here, terrorizing three other cats and seven adorable dogs in a small pen in the corner of the room.

Harry is here.

Louis tries not to look at him too much. Niall picks up on the mood and steers Louis away anytime Harry wanders near, and Liam runs interference. Luckily there are plenty of people who want face time with Louis, and he keeps himself distracted with idle chit-chat about meaningless things.

“Is that your cat over there?” asks one woman. “He’s a nightmare.”

“Thank you,” Louis says absently. Harry’s on his phone at a table nearby; Louis almost expects his own phone to buzz with a _you wanna get out of here?_ message before he remembers they don’t do that anymore.

The night passes slowly. He didn’t realize how long these events were before, since he’s snuck out of every single one hours before they were finished. It feels like _ages_ before Liam finds Louis and steers him towards the stage.

Louis doesn’t remember any of the speech he gives, just the hot light in his face and the applause at the end. He doesn’t remember because immediately after he steps offstage, when the room is still watching him, the band strikes up a slow tune.

_Moon River._

Louis swallows hard and tugs at his jacket. The moon river is wider than a mile, and so is the gap between Louis and Harry. But he crosses it anyway, his mouth growing drier with every step.

Harry’s still looking at his phone, his shoulders slumped in his red military jacket, a bright spot that wavers in Louis’ vision.

He’s three steps away when Harry finally looks up, his eyes widening when he sees Louis there on the edge of his bubble. His wide eyes flick past Louis to the crowd still watching them, the whispers starting to hiss like wildfire.

“What are you doing?” he mutters.

Louis clears his throat, and projects loudly. “May I have this dance?” he asks, and holds out his hand.

([x](http://harrehleh.tumblr.com/post/166561357601/we-will-be-as-if-chosen-by-alivingfire-for))

For a second, it feels like even the band stops playing. The crowd waits with bated breath; Louis feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest. Harry’s gaze catches on Louis’ outstretched hand.

And then he slips his hand into Louis’.

“Holy shit,” Louis says when they’re standing chest to chest. “I didn’t think you’d say yes.”

“I shouldn’t,” Harry says. “Is this just a statement to make you look more kingly?”

“This is me, asking the man I love to dance with me in public,” Louis says.

“The. The man you—” Harry stammers.

“Moon River is calling,” Louis says.

Harry’s hand finds Louis’ waist, Louis’ slides to rest between Harry’s shoulder blades. Years of dance lessons bleed back into Louis’ movements and he lets Harry lead, their steps in tandem as they sweep together.

“I have your Polaroid,” Louis says. “I want you to have it, even if— even if you don’t want this. I want you to be able to keep the memory.”

“If I don’t want this,” Harry repeats. “But you do?”

“I do,” Louis says. “God, Harry, I do.”

“But your crown, your throne,” Harry says. “You’re going to be king.”

“And I’m going to be a good king,” Louis agrees. Harry sweeps him into a low dip, watching his face intently. “I’ll continue my mother’s policies, and I’ll live by the rules of royalty my father taught me. And I’ll love you so much and so loudly that no one who sees us will be able to doubt that we belong together.”

“Jesus,” Harry says. “I really want to kiss you.”

“Good,” Louis smiles, tiny but hopeful. “Because I always want to kiss you.”

There’s sweeping cheers and applause when Louis breaks the waltz stance and steps into Harry’s space, cupping his cheeks and bringing himself closer. This kiss tastes like honey and champagne and the first ray of sunlight after a rain. A whistle cuts through the crowd, and Niall yells for them to get a room.

 _Moon River_ switches to something more up-tempo, and Harry pulls Louis against his chest, grinning. Louis hooks Harry’s knee up around his hip, smirking at the cat-calls that spring up.

“So, Your Highness,” he says, smiling widely. “Can I have the next dance too?”

“You can have all of them,” Harry promises.

And those words coming from Harry’s mouth feel like happily ever after.

([x](http://harrehleh.tumblr.com/post/166561357601/we-will-be-as-if-chosen-by-alivingfire-for))

 

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea why i used song puns for every single twitter user. i literally don't know, don't ask. 
> 
> go give the amazing [harrehleh](http://harrehleh.tumblr.com) some love, as well as the rest of the [rb](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/1D_Reverse_Bang_2017), because every one i've read so far has been amazing.
> 
> i'm on tumblr [here](alivingfire.tumblr.com/). :)


End file.
